As off-field tensions reach new levels, you have to wonder if the modern international governing body is fit for purpose
Got to say, I’m intrigued to see how the Netflix Six Nations documentary covers the Welsh rugby crisis. Given that the Wales team are refusing to cooperate with the Netflix crew, denying them access to team meetings and even turfing them out of Alun Wyn Jones’s press conference last week, you have to wonder what sort of material is going to be cobbled together. Perhaps Wales will simply be pixelated out of the final product: a ghostly apparition at the edges of the screen, implied but never physically present, which, you might argue, is a pretty good way of describing their performance against Scotland.
But the indignities of a global streaming giant are the least of our worries here. With England visiting Cardiff on Saturday afternoon, the prospect of an unprecedented Wales player strike remains worryingly real. Ask the players and they will insist this is not really a dispute about money, but security and basic dignity: the dozens of players who, in the absence of a new funding deal, have no idea whether they will still be employed in four months. The sleepless nights and declined mortgage offers. The breathtaking ineptitude of a union asking players to take a haircut while furnishing the new coach, Warren Gatland, with a £2m contract and planning a range of new capital investments: an interactive rugby museum, a roof walk and a zip wire at the Principality Stadium.
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