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Gareth Davies has faced many challenges over the years, both on and off the field, in his high-flying career.

He played at fly-half for Wales and the Lions and went on to hold senior roles with BBC Wales, Cardiff RFC, CBI Wales, S4C, the Sports Council for Wales, the Royal Mail, the WDA and the Dragons.

But, in his current role as WRU chairman, he is now taking on arguably the toughest challenge of the lot.

He is trying to succeed where legendary figures Vernon Pugh and Sir Tasker Watkins failed in the past, by reforming the governance of the Welsh game.

His plan is to reduce the size of the WRU board and the number of regional areas to produce a streamlined administration fit for the modern age.

But he needs to secure a 75 per cent vote from the Union’s member clubs at a Special General Meeting to be able to implement his plans and he knows there are some, including current board members, opposed to the changes.

So it won’t be easy, but he is convinced the reform is absolutely essential for the good of the game.

He sat down with rugby correspondent Simon Thomas to explain why.

Q: You’ve just begun your second three-year term as WRU chairman. How do you reflect on your time at the helm so far?

A: When I was first offered the role, it was a question of why would I take it, why would I want to do it? It was certainly not for the money.

Is it because I want to be the big cheese in Welsh rugby? Not really. Was it to get some nice trips out of being chairman of the WRU and all the other stuff with World Rugby? Not really. I don’t need that.

I have tried to get away from rugby on a number of occasions over the years. But it’s something that has been so important to me from the age of five.

Rugby has been all consuming, from a young boy going to Stradey Park, following people like Dai Watkins, Barry John and Benny.

It’s been the thread running through me all my life. So I felt if I could contribute, if I could help in any sort of way, then I would. It was just a chance to hopefully do something.

That is what I tried to do in my first term.

I saw my role as addressing the culture, the behaviour, how we interacted with you guys and everybody else and the regional stuff.

The priority I saw at the time was to make some internal changes and also to rebuild bridges with external partners. That was the intention. There was a lot of noise out there which wasn’t conducive to how a business should operate.

So that was sort of my first term, not knowing I was going to get a second term.

Q: Well, you have got a second three years now, and you’ve clearly have got a firm focus in terms of the governance changes you are proposing.

A: I knew by the end of my first term, if I were re-elected, the governance was something we had to address.

People may ask why is this so important, why do we want to change Welsh rugby?

If you look at other sports, the ECB have just announced a total revamp of their board, British Cycling had to do it because of financial pressures from UK Sport and Sport England.

With our current board, there are 20 members. At board meetings, we have to have the full executive there as well, because there are issues people may raise that need answers. So that’s 30 people round the table. Sorry, it's just impossible.

We’ve tweaked things a bit in the last 12 months. We have created some sub-boards, but it is deckchair moving. It’s the same people. That’s not being critical of the people.

Q: Can you give us a tangible example of why things need to change?

A: We had some consultants in 18 months ago to do an analysis of the board.

We are an £80m business this year, probably more than that, and only 9 per cent of the board had any experience of strategy, 8 per cent had any sort of commercial experience. So we are playing with fire really.

There was a week in June of this year when we were hosting the Champions League final, the biggest sporting event in the world, and the anti-terrorism people were telling us if there’s going to be a terrorist attack anywhere in the world that weekend it’s going to be here. It concentrates the mind.

That week we were also negotiating with Isuzu and Admiral for continued sponsorship, we were buying the Dragons and Rodney Parade and we were right in the middle of negotiating for the PRO14.

All those four items were seven figure tickets. If one of those had fallen down, we would have been in trouble. There was no input from the board at all. There were a couple of us working on it. So there is no contribution, that’s the stark reality.

That’s an example, I think, of why we need to change.

Q: What exactly are you proposing then?

A: We are proposing a small board. The New Zealand board is nine, the Aussie board is eight, the RFU are 12 or 13. So we are aiming for a smaller board, between eight and 12. We are looking at 10 at the moment.

We would keep our two independent non-execs who have been a great acquisition to the business. They bring a totally different perspective to it.

We would have five club directors based on five regions.

At the moment, we have got nine districts which, to be honest, don’t mean anything. It’s very historical and a bit archaic.

We have had comments from younger people who have said they have been to district meetings and it’s three hours of their life they will never get back!

These people don’t want to go to a two, three hour meeting to winge about tickets or second team rugby, they want to contribute to the future development of the game.

If we had five regions based on geography - west Wales, the Swansea/Neath area, Cardiff and Valleys possibly, Gwent and North Wales - I am convinced there are people out there who would put their hand up to be chairman of these regional boards.

We found it in Gwent. David Buttress has come along. He’s a 40 year old guy who played rugby for Croesyceiliog, he’s gone on to build a £6 billion business in eight years and wants to get back into rugby. It’s only four more of those people in Wales we need to find. People are out there.

We would have somebody from the professional game on the board as well. There is no professional presence on there whatsoever at present. It’s the biggest spend and the biggest income and there’s nobody who has been involved in the pro game on the board.

The WRU chief executive would stay on there and we would have sub-boards that deal with the community game, not at the board level.

Q: What are you looking for from the new board you are advocating?

A: The word diverse is important.

If we were a rugby team, we would be 13 forwards and two backs, because we have got 14, 15 people from the community game on the board.

They are great, they have puts years and years of service in. But is it the right composition, is that the right team to lead Welsh rugby into the future? I don’t think so.

(Image: Rob Browne)

The community game is not discussed at the board, that’s the reality. We have got other more major things to talk about and decide upon.

So we have already created a community sub-board to have a more meaningful discussion on the what the community game needs. That has made an improvement in the last 12 months or so.

Staying on the question of diversity, 25 per cent of people that play rugby in the world are women, so isn’t it fair that there’s representation?

We’ve gone round the districts over the last month or so and we’ve had more than 200 people turn up for the first four meetings and there were probably about six women, whereas we have had 10,000 girls playing the game in the last 12 months.

So is the board reflective of the community and who is involved in the game?

We need diversity and we need quality people to sit on our board.

Q: You mentioned the plan to have a regional representative on the board. How do you reflect on the way the regions fit into the current set-up?

A: The regions do sit slightly outside the triangle. You’ve got Wales at the top, the community game below and the regions are over there somewhere, not integrated. That contributes maybe to the poor support people talk about.

Unless we can get aligned, then there is an issue with spectators and general development.

Q: Might you use the current regions as the names for four of the new administrative areas?

A: Well, we had one meeting in West Wales where two guys said why don’t you just call these new regions you are proposing the Ospreys, Scarlets and so on.

I was a bit nervous there might be a thought out there this is a regional takeover. But the general reaction has been really positive. No one has argued against that.

There has been a bit of mischief making to the effect that clubs would have to go cap in hand to the regions. Look, the regions have got enough on their plate running their own business. There will be no change to the distribution of grant money. It will be done from Cardiff and ticket allocation will remain the same as well.

And any change we are proposing can’t happen without the say-so of the clubs. We have to persuade them that what we are proposing is the way ahead.

Q: What is the general reaction you have received to your proposals?

A: We’ve had four meetings so far where we have given the presentation. We’ve been to Whitland, Pontardullais, Pontyclun and Penallta, we are going to north Wales in early January.

We have had 206 people turn up, which is pretty good, with one to go. To give it some context, there were 220 people at the AGM.

The people that have turned up at the meetings have been really supportive and there was general agreement in terms of our direction of travel.

Q: What’s the next step up? How do you go about getting this through?

A: The board agreed last week that we will go to a Special Meeting as soon as possible. There’s no date fixed yet, but it will probably be April/May. Otherwise, it’s hanging around until the AGM at the end of October. It needs a 75 per cent vote, which is tough.

Q: Where does the resistance lie that might lead to more than 25 per cent saying no?

A: It’s the traditional heartland of rugby if you like and the thought of change, because we actually quite like our set-up and our district meetings every first Monday of the month or whatever.

One guy told me, “We don’t need this change, we’ve had the same agenda for 35 years.” I said: “You’ve just made my case for me.”

My response is the game is now changing every 35 minutes.

District meetings are made up of well intentioned people who have served their communities for years and that’s great.

One guy at a district meeting I went to a few months ago said, “Oh, we have all failed then, have we?”

No, they haven’t failed, they have served the game fantastically well for lots of years. But you are now talking about a different animal.

If a couple of the kind of things I mentioned from last June were to fall down because we haven’t got appropriate people making the right decisions, it could be fatal for the game.

And if anything did happen like that, it would be the community game that would suffer because the top end of the game - the regions, the Wales team, the Wales players - is contracted. That has to continue. If there were some sort of catastrophic event, it’s the community clubs who would suffer. I am trying to get them to see that.

I think the board is probably split on the proposals.

I picked up a couple of weeks ago that some board members were being fairly negative about the changes among their clubs, so we are trying to address that and allay any fears, both for the clubs and the individuals and appeal to their better nature in that this is for the game and why I got involved. We are duty bound to do what is right for the game and what is right for the business moving forward.

Q: If you didn’t get it through, what would you do?

A: I think we would persevere. Some bodies have had to go through three or four times. We would need to find out why. We have asked why wouldn’t you change and no-one can give me an answer.

There’s an element of complacency where people say we have record turnovers, we make good money. But we have got to move on and be far more agile and quicker in the way we plan things and manage things.

So I think we would persevere. We have to do this.