Ospreys CEO Lance Bradley: We want to continue with games in London
Taking on the running of a rugby club amid the sport’s financial struggles is a brave decision. But Lance Bradley, new chief executive at Welsh region Ospreys, has not spent his first few weeks dipping his toe in the water. Instead he’s got stuck in, turning up to age-grade matches and telling his club’s landlords that they want to move away from their stadium.
Bradley, who held the same position at Premiership club Gloucester Rugby until he left last year, is now at the helm of the United Rugby Championship at a time when Welsh rugby cannot seem to catch a break.
This time last year the national team’s Six Nations fixture against England was nearly cancelled due to a player strike, the central governing body have cut funding and the four regional teams – Ospreys, Cardiff, Dragons and Scarlets – are haemorrhaging players to overseas clubs.
Lots of opportunities for Ospreys
The Swansea club, too, ditched Wales this season when they moved one of their home matches to London. Their URC fixture against the Sharks drew 7,000 fans, topping figures for many of the home crowds achieved in south Wales.
“We’re looking at lots of opportunities. The London game was a great idea and I’m familiar with what Harlequins have been doing for a long time with the Big Game. That’s hugely successful for them, and it attracts a crowd, but isn’t your typical rugby crowd,” Bradley told City PM
“If we could get to a point where we had a similar kind of setup, and we do need to look after local fans, where there’s a game that isn’t necessarily brilliantly supported here.
“There’s a lot of South Africans in London so if they know that every year there’s going to be this amazing game between a team which happens to have several Welsh internationals, and a South African team that’s probably got about half a dozen South African internationals, that’s almost an international fixture.
“And you should be able to market that to make that a really attractive proposition. So that’s certainly something that we would want to continue.”
Disconnect
Wales tend to get pretty healthy crowds at international level, though their two home Six Nations matches against France and Italy in 2022 saw 10,000 empty seats each.
But at regional level, where there has been two decades of debate following the decision to scrap clubs such as Llanelli and Neath from the top flight and replace them with franchises, all is not cosy.
Welsh sides have struggled in the URC – the Ospreys are first among the Welsh competitors but only eighth overall – and from next year squads are set to be depleted further.
“There’s a disconnect between international rugby and club rugby and it’s a bigger disconnect than it should be,” Bradley added
“People complain that it’s £100 a ticket to go and watch Wales at the Principality – it’s £20 tickets here and we’ve got 13 of the Welsh team. And many of the teams that we will be playing have South African internationals or Italian internationals, or Scottish internationals playing for them.
“If it’s another Welsh team we don’t have quite so much of an issue but we need to do a better job of explaining that to people. I’d like to think that we can work with the WRU to get them to help promote that.
“This could be a big opportunity for them to say: ‘we know that you want to watch our international players and you can do it every week if you want’. Nobody’s going to magic a load of money [to save the sport] so we’ve got to look for clever things that we can do that makes it better for everybody, and all work together to make Welsh rugby and rugby in general better.
Rugby is entertainment
“My philosophy is we’re in the entertainment business, and we need to entertain people.
“I’m aware of the history that some of the older fans were unhappy with it, but we’ve been going for 20 years so there’s a whole generation of youngsters who don’t know any different.
“So you have to focus on where the opportunities are. If somebody is really determined that they could never support the Ospreys because they love Swansea or they love Neath or whoever it might be, they are unlikely to change their mind.
“But if people love rugby and we can show them a really exciting brand of rugby where we win more often than we lose, why would you not come to that?”
It is an uphill battle, one with opponents determined to witness failure, but the United Rugby Championship side from Swansea looks set on London once more. It has been one of the few successes in regional rugby over the last few years and something the Ospreys will want, and need, to cling on to.