"Welsh rugby treats players like pieces of meat, not assets"

THEY’VE BUILT the women’s game around the men’s game in Wales but it has to be its own thing.

They can’t be replicas with contracting models. They contracted the girls, which was the right thing to do, and put investment in, but not necessarily in the right way or with the right plans or structures in place.

It felt like, ‘Oh, we’ll pay the girls now and that will be enough.’ There doesn’t seem to be a full strategic plan for it.

While the men are paid by clubs, the women are essentially centrally contracted by the WRU and have different employment rights.

Some of the stuff that has come out, claims that the union was putting pressure on them to sign contracts and threatening to pull them out of competitions, doesn’t look good.

It’s indicative of Welsh rugby where a lot of talking goes on and not a lot of action and then it gets to the last minute. If things aren’t right, then you can’t sign contracts. We played a handful of Tests without an agreement in place about ten years ago, but there was an agreement that it would be sorted. So we played in good faith.