Rugby, Labour and the Crisis of Welsh Institutions

Nye Davies

Sport can often reflect a nation. In Wales, rugby has played a prominent role in the formation of a national consciousness, or at least a shared perception of what it means to be Welsh.

Dai Smith and Gareth Williams wrote in their history of the WRU, Field of Praise, that the emergent dominance of Welsh rugby coincided with a period of Welsh national awakening.

More than a century on, Welsh rugby is in a state of crisis. Dire results at international level have seen Wales plummet down the world rankings, while uncertainty and a lack of success at professional level have left the reputation of the game in tatters.

The latest development, the potential purchase of Cardiff Rugby by Y11, appears only to prolong that uncertainty, with the future of pro rugby in Swansea still apparently undecided.

I don’t intend to dissect the decision to reduce the professional game to three teams, nor the potential/imminent demise of the Ospreys. I would like to: as a season-ticket holder since the club’s inception, I have both a vested interest and no shortage of anger towards Y11 and the WRU.

Instead, I want to talk about how the WRU, an institution that has sat at the heart of Welsh sporting and cultural life for almost 150 years, has, rather than creating lasting legacies of Grand Slams and world-class players, become adept at producing apathy and disillusionment.

You need only look at recent ticket sales for internationals at the Millennium Stadium to grasp the depth of that disenchantment. Once the hottest ticket in town, sales have been grindingly slow, with high prices and a poor atmosphere deterring many people from attending at all.

As we enter 2026, the future of the game in Wales, and the organisation charged with sustaining it, feels increasingly perilous.

Historic institutions

The WRU, however, is not the only historical Welsh institution in crisis. The Welsh Labour Party, after more than a century of dominance, is also entering a period of rupture. Recent polling places it as low as fourth for the upcoming Senedd election, its grip on power visibly loosening. 2026 may yet prove to be the year in which some of the core assumptions of Welsh political and cultural life finally begin to unravel.

While the circumstances of their respective crises differ, the parallels are hard to ignore. The WRU appears increasingly out of touch with supporters. A succession of administrators have failed to properly support the game, and the consequences are plain to see – both in results on the pitch and in engagement at all levels.

Welsh Labour, similarly, appears detached from the electorate that sustained it for generations. A lack of vision, a lack of strategy, and the accumulated consequences of twenty-seven years in government, during which Wales has fallen short across too many key measures, have caught up with the party.

WRU Chair Richard Collier-Keywood and First Minister Eluned Morgan both insist that the organisations they lead retain the confidence of the Welsh public. The evidence suggests otherwise. As the WRU loses ground to sports like football, where the FAW has successfully articulated a modern, inclusive sense of Welshness that resonates with younger supporters, Welsh Labour is losing its progressive Welsh identity to Plaid Cymru.

What links these declines is the way each organisation relates to its own past.

Radicalism

Welsh Labour remains committed to the language of radicalism. It invokes Aneurin Bevan with ritual regularity, it speaks the language of solidarity and community, and it harkens back to a radical past, replete with references to togetherness in the coalfields and on the rugby field.

Yet, in practice, the party appears far away from the principles it appeals to and the heroic figures it celebrates. The language of radicalism is appropriated in the name of managerialism; history regularly referenced but, as Gwyn Alf Williams wrote, “rarely to be brought to bear on vulgarly contemporary problems”.

The WRU suffers from a similar affliction. It speaks of rugby as the heartbeat of Welsh life, yet its decisions steadily undermine the roots that sustained the game for generations. Just as Welsh Labour has increasingly turned to representatives with little connection to the communities they serve, the WRU places its faith in elite performance gurus who appear dismissive of Welsh rugby’s own history and culture.

Professional rugby in Wales has been allowed to wither through years of under-investment and poor strategic leadership. The WRU has neither committed the resources required to make the regions competitive nor embedded them in competitions that supporters recognise as coherent or meaningful. What remains is a fragile elite game that is disconnected from its audience and perpetually one crisis away from collapse.

Survival and the future

On Friday night, I watched the Ospreys play the Lions. It was a match heavy with emotion, shaped by a week in which the club’s very existence had been placed in doubt. There was defiance in the crowd, a sense of solidarity, and a feeling that people were turning up not simply to watch a game, but to make themselves heard.

Yet the contest itself felt strangely hollow. With no disrespect to the Lions, it is difficult to muster genuine enthusiasm for a fixture against a team based thousands of miles away, in a league that makes little geographic, historical, or even environmental sense.

This was a professional match untethered from rivalry or place: long-haul flights, unfamiliar opponents, and a competition with little emotional logic.

The following afternoon could not have been more different. At Dunvant RFC, I watched Neath, my ‘original’ team, before the creation of the Ospreys, take on Llanelli Wanderers in the semi-final of the Welsh Premiership Cup. It was wet, windy, and muddy. But it was rugby played with intensity at an old-fashioned ground, with something real at stake.

Neath defended doggedly against a committed Wanderers side, and the match felt like what sport should be about: rivalry, intensity, and passion.

Competence

This is not a call to abandon professionalism, dismantle the regional model, or retreat into nostalgia for the amateur era. The modern game makes that impossible. But professionalism demands competence, clarity, and adaptation – and the WRU has failed to provide them. Its actions have led to a point where four professional teams are deemed unaffordable, elite rugby is set to disappear from Wales’ second city, and supporters are withdrawing their allegiance.

Both Welsh Labour and the WRU trade heavily on their pasts while struggling to articulate futures that feel authentic to the people they represent. Both invoke history while neglecting the values that once gave it meaning. And both are discovering that reverence alone cannot sustain loyalty.

Today, as Wales drifts away from Welsh Labour, it also drifts away from the sport that has been central to the national consciousness. As these institutions lose touch with the people they were meant to serve, their place at the centre of Welsh life is no longer assured.

Nye Davies is a Lecturer at Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre, and a season-ticket holder at both Neath RFC and the Ospreys