Welsh Rugby Union chair says Ospreys not necessarily dead
The embattled chair of the Welsh Rugby Union has today insisted a reduction of teams to three does not necessarily kill off the Ospreys.
The governing body of rugby in Wales has been battling with fans and stakeholders over plans which will see at least one of the four regions struck off to save money.
And when the owners of Ospreys, Y11 – organisers of the Hackney half marathon – entered into an exclusivity period to buy Cardiff, concerns were raised over the future of the Swansea-based team.
But WRU chairman Richard Collier-Keywood, who could be sacked at an extraordinary general meeting late this year, refuted the inevitable downfall of the Ospreys at a hearing in Wales’ Senedd.
“The assumption then was that Ospreys was going to be the club that was killed off,” said Collier-Keywood. “That is not the case in terms of what will necessarily happen as a result of Y11 owning two clubs.
“There is a totally separate process the WRU are going through of how we decide to award the licences. There is one west licence.”
That could put the Scarlets, based in Llanelli, on a war path with the Ospreys.
Welsh Rugby Union on Ospreys
As well as being confronted with an extraordinary general meeting, the Welsh Rugby Union also faces a potential hearing by the Competition and Markets Authority relating to Y11’s expected purchase of Cardiff.
Furthermore, there could be a high court challenge from regional stakeholder Swansea Council over the purchase deal.
And it comes after Liberal Democrat MP David Chadwick challenged the culture secretary Lisa Nandy over the future of Collier-Keywood and WRU chief Abi Tierney.
“Going forward I expect that we will carry out a fair and transparent process to determine who gets that [west] licence. We have not done that yet,” Collier-Keywood added.
“We will carry out that process because there may be some conditions we will put into that licence about where rugby needs to be played.
“For example, it could be that rugby has to be played across the west region, for example.
“We will take out some form of process to award the west licence, we have not had enough time to do that yet.
“We made this decision at the very end of October; we are three months into this process and we will carry that out properly.”