Dragons Chairman David Buttress hosted a Q&A session for Season Members at Rodney Parade alongside Head Coach Ceri Jones earlier this week.
Supporters were given the opportunity to pose questions to both about any Dragons matters, on- or off-the-field.
David introduced the event and revealed insights around the Dragons’ funding situation, his thoughts following recent PRB matters, plans to develop Rodney Parade, plus potential private investment in the PRO14 and separately to make Dragons Rugby majority privately owned once more.
Introduction
“I’ve been here at the Dragons for around 18 months or so and I love it. This region means a hell of a lot to me.
“I start with that because it’s been more difficult than I thought: it’s hard work and it’s tough for a couple of reasons.”
Dragons’ financial position
“Firstly, it’s actually getting money into the game and that’s not just a Dragons thing: that’s across all four regions. The Welsh Rugby Union would say the same: it’s hard and takes a bit longer than one would think.
“Commercially it’s not that easy, so actually raising the money needed to grow and develop is not as easy as one would like and of course, that directly correlates to what can be spent on the squad, which impacts on the team’s performance and the two things are interrelated whether we like it or not.
“Ceri [Jones] and the team do the best job possible, but let’s be clear that in Welsh rugby it isn’t a level playing field, so one of the surprises for me was the comparison between the Scarlets and Ospreys in the West with the investment the Dragons get – it’s significantly less.
“I saw a media report that said the Dragons had £6 million pounds, but that’s a million miles from true and there’s about a £2 million-pound gap between us and Ospreys and about a £2.5 million-pound gap between us and Scarlets.
“That’s the reality and I’m not complaining about that. It’s always important to be upfront about the realities, it’s not an excuse, but it’s the truth and I have to take responsibility for that investment gap and do whatever I can to try and close it and I see that as my job.
“Whether that’s trying to get additional private investment, additional sponsors or more money out of the Welsh Rugby Union, which would give Ceri more money to sign players, hopefully gets a better team on the pitch that wins more often and makes everyone feel good.
“Does that get fixed in six months? It does not. Does it get fixed in the next coming years? Yes, but it takes time and it’s going to be a longer road and we definitely need the help of the supporters to get there.
“It’s clear to see how difficult it gets quite quickly. When a club starts to lose supporters and the benefactors it gets quite tough and quite quickly, so we definitely need to stick together through difficult moments.”
Professional Rugby Board
“The second thing I want to talk about is the Professional Rugby Board, which is the four Chairmen of the four regions and there are two Directors, the Chief Executive and the Finance Director of the Welsh Rugby Union.
“On the week of the Scotland vs. Wales game there was a lot of talk about mergers and obviously, that hasn’t happened and that’s very clear now.
“There was a statement by the Scarlets in that week clarifying what had happened and that was probably the most accurate reflection of events that I’d seen.
“It was very unfortunate and one of my reflections would be that the Welsh professional game off the field needs to shape up.
“I think they’d badly let the national team down, Warren [Gatland] down and the players in the past Six Nations. I was personally embarrassed to even be on that board at that time and I said that in the meeting.
“I thought it was really unprofessional and in my 20-odd years in business I’ve never seen a board behave like that and it was completely unacceptable.
“We need to get much better, the off-field bunch and I include myself in that because I have collective responsibility for that board - we all need to do a lot better and it’s completely unacceptable.
“No matter how difficult the conversations are - on a board they need to stay in a room and I think it’s like a family: it’s healthy and normal to have difficult conversations around the dinner table, but when you go out the front door, you all stick together and it was disappointing to see that wasn’t the case a couple of weeks ago and the timing of it was appalling.
“I hope that if any good comes out of it, it’s a big learning curve and hopefully never happens again.”
Plans to develop Rodney Parade
“The last thing I want to mention is the plans at the Dragons and there’s probably only three things that we need to do if I simplified it.
“Firstly, developing Rodney Parade and there’s lots of opportunities to do that by raising the money privately and I think we can probably get some backing, as I understand it.
“That’s been delayed probably six months because of all these discussions around the Professional Rugby Board, private investment in the PRO14, signing off budgets and funding for next season.
“We’ve got to get back to building stuff and not just managing conflict and political nonsense because there’s so much that needs to be done in terms of building.
“We can’t spend all our time navel-gazing about mergers that don’t happen and that’s just not a good use of everyone’s time, so I want to get back to that and that’s so important for us as a region and I want to be a good partner to the other regions and the Welsh Rugby Union.
“My word, we also need to focus on ourselves and I’ve spent an awful lot of time in Westgate Street over the last six months.”
Making Dragons majority privately owned
“Secondly, when we start thinking about building stuff, we’re going to have to get some private investment, which is not easy to do.
“We’ve had a fantastic Chairman at the Dragons for a very long time that has put a lot of money into this region and I think whether it’s easy or not, we’re going to have to get the Welsh Rugby Union into a more comfortable position in terms of ownership and it’s very difficult for them to be seen to be funding or favouring us.
“I think they don’t in reality anyway, but the other regions rightly jump up and down a bit about that and the healthier thing for Welsh Rugby would be for the Dragons to be majority privately owned again – so let’s see if we can make that happen.
“We’re going to try: there’s no guarantees that we can, but I think it’d be much better for the Welsh Rugby Union, for the other three regions and a better, healthier situation for us.
“It’s not done by any stretch of the imagination, but I think if we could make that happen, it’d be a better thing.”
Potential private investment in the PRO14
“The third thing to talk about is what’s happening with the league.
“Professional rugby is in great demand and with what happened in the English Premiership with CVC Capital Partners, there are serious and ongoing conversations with private investment happening in the PRO14 and I’m genuinely really excited about that.
“It is a significant amount of money and if that could happen, it’d be good for everybody in the league.
“I think that involves structural changes as well, which would be welcomed and most importantly, we need much further investment into the teams in the league, so that’d be a healthy thing to follow in terms of what’s happened in England.
“Those are the things that are happening, the conversations are in flight and there’s lots of opportunities for the product in terms of professional rugby.
“We’ve got to get our house in order in Wales off the field to put us in the best position to maximise those conversations, otherwise we start to look like something that doesn’t represent the game as well as it should off the field.”
Conclusion
“Players and coaches and the Welsh national squad and the Welsh national coaches; I think we’d all accept they’ve done a tremendous job.
“I’d give them an almost nine out of ten: I never give anyone ten because there’s always room for development, but if I was grading us off-field in terms of the Professional Rugby Board, I’d give us a one out of ten right now and so we need to do significantly better.
“They’re probably my remarks really in terms of setting the scene in terms of where we’re at, so is there lots to do? Is there a great opportunity here? 100% there is and not even for one second in my mind do I doubt that. Is it hard? Is it going to take time? Absolutely and is it going to be easy? No.
“Every person and team in this league and Ceri [Jones] will tell you - is doing all the same things every year and our budget stays the same as it was last year, next year, which makes life a lot harder because everywhere else there’s more money going in and that makes it harder.
“We’re going to have to keep being aggressive, taking some risks, but also retain that ambition and hope because it is definitely there and real.
“We look at our boys representing Wales now, who have been developed locally under Ceri’s and the other coaches’ leadership: there’s a lot of talent in this area and it’s on us to set the region up financially, so they can maximise that talent and best represent Dragons Rugby.”
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