Radical proposals to streamline the running of rugby in Wales will be put to a meeting of the Welsh Rugby Union's 239 clubs in Cardiff tomorrow amid fears that the game is sliding towards bankruptcy.
The club delegates will consider plans to replace the WRU's 27-strong general committee, which submits itself for re-election every year, with an eight-man executive board underpinned by an elected general council which would meet quarterly.
The proposals - there are 12 in all, some of which will need a 75% majority to succeed - have been drawn up by a working party chaired by the WRU president Sir Tasker Watkins, whose members included the former Wales captains Gerald Davies and Gwyn Jones. However, they have proved too revolutionary for the general committee that has drawn up motions of its own, which effectively amount to more of the same.
Wales is a conservative rugby nation and significant change is unlikely. The general committee argues that the current administrative set-up is serving the game well, but the WRU is £75 million in debt and it was revealed this week that it does not own all the land the Millennium Stadium was built on.
BT still owns part of the land and will not hand it over until the Union settles a £15m debt. The WRU borrowed more than £50m from Barclays Bank to build the stadium and it has yet to repay a penny of the capital.
Barclays have spent the last few weeks holding meetings with the WRU, which is paying £4m interest on the debt annually, to find out when it will be able to start paying off the capital. The Union had budgeted for an increase in revenue from the new Six Nations television contract - it currently receives £2.1m a match - but that figure is more likely to go down than up, heightening the concern of Barclays.
A key plank of the working party report was its recommendation that the Millennium Stadium, which is run by a plc controlled by the WRU, should become more indepen dent of the Union with a chief executive appointed. The general committee wants to maintain the current symbiotic relationship, even though the stadium is a loss-maker.
The general committee's view runs counter to a report written by the WRU's auditors last year which expressed concerns about the management of the stadium and its cross-financing with the Union. It recommended a shake-up on the grounds that the WRU was struggling to support the stadium financially, but its observations have yet to be made available to the member clubs.
Some members of the general committee have privately expressed concerns that the WRU is in danger of seeing the stadium repossessed by the bank. Appeals have been made to the Millennium Commission for funding, but it would come at the cost of a change in the plc board, a price which is considered too high.
The leading clubs in Wales are concerned that, without change, they will not be able to compete financially with their English counterparts, prompting a player exodus.
