The making of the WRU's headline strategy to save Welsh rugby as it goes public in 24 hours

Welsh rugby is at a crossroads as it reaches its most critical juncture since the inception of regional rugby in 2003.

The men's national side recently suffered the ignominy of a first Six Nations whitewash for 21 years, the regional game is in dire straits, the women's game is still in need of further investment, while the community game has many challenges. Over the last six months the Welsh Rugby Union, along with its key stakeholders, have been working tirelessly to come up with a plan which will put the game in this country back on a firmer footing.

On Wednesday, WRU CEO Abi Tierney will announce the outline of a five-year strategy for the entire game in Wales. Tierney sat down with WalesOnline rugby correspondent Steffan Thomas to explain how the strategy was put together.

SIGN UP: Get the new exclusive Inside Welsh rugby newsletter for full insight into what's really going on around all the big issues. This special offer will get you full access for the entire year for just £10 instead of £40.

How to create a strategy in just six months

Tierney describes the situation Welsh rugby finds itself in as a "challenging perfect storm" with the financial situation in the game along with poor on field performances prompting change. The former director-general of HM Passport Office and UK Visas and Immigration only joined the WRU last summer, and within months decided to devise a new strategy for the whole game in Wales.

"I was so conscious it had to be a strategy that could be delivered," she told WalesOnline. "The first thing I did was read all the old strategies just to really get a feel to what had gone before and where there had been real times of success or not.

"I think certainly the view when I spoke to people about previous strategies is that there was quite a lot of energy going into the strategy process, but it had been relatively light and probably didn't fundamentally change the path that the game was on.

"I knew having read those that we were going to have to do something different. One of the first things I did was actually talk to the other rugby unions about what they were doing because quite a few were them were in a similar strategy cycle.

"I spoke to the IRFU and it's interesting to look at their website at the moment because two weeks ago they released their four-year plan. The RFU were doing something similar and the NZRU released their strategy a few months ago.

"I spoke to Mark Robinson as well and asked him how they'd done theirs, what worked and what hadn't worked because I was conscious I was in a new sector and really needed to understand and learn from them. The British & Irish Lions are also developing a post 2029 strategy and I was involved in that as a member of their board.

"As a result of getting involved with that I came across an organisation called Portas who had been mentioned several times by everyone I spoke to as being a very good strategy consulting house purely focused on sport." Tierney has engaged with all the major stakeholders including the community clubs, sponsors, Warren Gatland and the Professional Rugby Board who have been heavily involved in putting the strategy together.

She decided to take the advice of others by bringing Portas Consulting, who are a leading global management consultancy who provide independent advice to organisations in the world of sport, on board. "What was really good about Portas was because of the work they'd done with other organisations they'd had a massive data set already of benchmarks and things they had concluded about how different organisations had done it," she said.

"One of the first things we did was a really big piece of benchmarking of where the WRU was on a whole raft of things, like core rugby performance, financial performance, looking right the way down to comparing our operating revenue with what we can generate from our commercial perspective, looking at how much we spend on the community game per participant, looking at how much we spend on regional clubs and correlating that with their performance over the last 10 years.

"I think it was a 140-page piece of analysis that actually gave us our starting point about where are the things we could do differently that could make a difference. In parallel we set up engagement processes and I think this was what was really important and different to previous strategies.

"We've been really upfront as part of the review that we would engage with the audience, fans and stakeholders in how we do this. I've been to every district meeting and that's been quite iterative. So the first few were about what's important to you and the second bunch, once we started to get the draft strategy together, was much more about this is what's emerging and does it feel right.

"One of the biggest pieces of work was with the Professional Rugby Board (PRB). We've had regular strategy sessions with them.

"We've also done the same with the Community Game Board (CGB). We've done pieces with Welsh Government, we've done piece with our lenders.

"That's how I went about setting it up. I'm quite a data-led person.

"I'm quite an instinctive leader in terms of what I think needs to be done but I've learnt that actually making sure you've got the data and evidence to do it was really important. That's potentially what's really different between this one and the others is the rigorous and diligent data analysis this time around."

What is actually going to get published on Wednesday?

To make it clear what is going to get published on Wednesday is the outline for the strategy, but wider details and decisions will be revealed this autumn. The full strategy and the action plan to push Welsh rugby forward will be published in its entirety in October.

What is going to get published tomorrow is an overarching trajectory for rugby in Wales and where it wants to get to but crucially not how they get there. "It's the five-year strategic plan we are launching on Wednesday and then we will launch it in full this October," Tierney tells WalesOnline.

"What we are flagging in that process is that as part of that strategic plan we've got some decisions to make when we are on the path. That's the other thing that I really strongly believe, and I have been a strategy director twice before in my life, is that you can't produce a nice shiny glossy on Wednesday and then go okay that's it we'll come back to you in five years with the next one.

"So, we are flagging as part of the implementation there are some big decisions to be made. We are giving indications as to the timeline of when those will be.

"Those implementation decisions will be enabling us to deliver the five-year strategic plan that everyone will see on Wednesday."

Why is this review so important?

Welsh rugby has been failing for a long time with the top-heavy approach of previous CEOs leading to the the professional game and the pathways getting neglected. Finally the rot has spread upwards, with the men's national side struggling for results while the regional game remains in the doldrums.

I put it to Tierney that the game is at it's most critical stage for over two decades and that change is needed, which she agrees with.

"In the strategy there'll be a number of different pillars," she said. "We've got a low branching strategy and then we've got pillars and one of them is the professional game.

"We've worked very closely with Warren and the four regions to say what does a good regional and national team look like based on benchmarking. So, we've looked in real depth at places like Ireland and New Zealand which are smaller nations but are very successful both regionally and nationally.

"We've created what I'd call an archetype. So, this is how much we'd need to invest, this is the structures you need underneath it, that's everything from facilities to your support staff, how many physios, what's your nutrition look like and what you academies look like.

"So, there's so much detail there. We are putting quite a few changes in there."

How radical will the strategy be?

Well that remains to be seen and the so-called big decisions have not been made yet. Many experts and supporters have speculated about things like reducing the number of professional clubs, a tiered funding model for the regional game and different ways to fund the entire game.

Such radical moves, if they are to happen, won't be in tomorrow's strategy outline, with Tierney expected to announce the WRU's long-term vision for the game in Wales rather than anything too dramatic. "I don't think there's one silver bullet which can fix Welsh rugby," she said.

"What it is is a really thorough diligent strategy, which has looked at all the different options and what we are doing is being really open about the crossroads we are at financially and performance-wise. If there was one big silver bullet then I wouldn't have shied away from doing that.

"I think what the strategy and the benchmarking process showed us is that actually it's probably about doing a hundred things differently and better. If I take something like our exiles programme, or our academies or how we grow participants and get better facilities in our community game.

"There's two big bits which I really think will put Wales at the vanguard. One is this is all about professionalising rugby as a business and making decisions that are business-led to enable us to win. I think that if we really stick to that with a new operating system and a new operating framework in place we will be ahead of a lot of the other rugby unions.

"Actually the governance changes that were made last year enabled us to do that in a way that other rugby unions can't do as fast as we can."

How confident are the WRU that the strategy will get Wales back on track?

Tierney is confident the strategy will result in success at all levels of the game in Wales but she is quick to point out it is a flexible strategy and there will likely be bumps along the way.

"It's been so thorough as a process I don't think we've left any stone unturned," she said. "Will we get everything right as we go through the next five years? No.

"But will we have the KPI's and the date underpinning it that if we are not on track I can be really transparent that we are not on track and we'll need to adjust course. That happens in every organisations but in the past we haven't had KPI's going to our board, we haven't had a date going to our board, we haven't been able to share that with the regions and the community clubs.

"Will we get everything right in the strategy? No, but will we have a process where we are agile enough to adjust our course if what we think is the right lever to pull turns out not to be right or maybe not going fast enough then we will have the operating and framework system in place to adjust."

Who are the figures who have put the strategy together?

There have been a number of key strategy meetings over the last six months. Aside from Tierney, the key figures are WRU chair Richard Collier-Keywood, PRB chair Malcolm Wall, WRPA CEO Gareth Lewis, representatives from all four professional sides, Warren Gatland, WRU performance director Huw Bevan, head of player development John Alder, WRU CFO Leighton Davies, WRU executive director of rugby Nigel Walker, WRU INED'S Andrew Williams, Amanda Bennett, Marianne Okland and Amanda Bennett.

Tierney admits putting the strategy together has been challenging, especially when one considers the different views of all the key stakeholders. Inevitably there will be some who are left disappointed but this is about making tough decisions for the greater good of Welsh rugby.

"Often CEO's come into a business and they inherit a strategy which somebody else has produced," she said. "When you are actually starting with a blank piece of paper it means you have to have a really rich conversations with people when maybe you wouldn't have a reason to have that level of conversation with them otherwise.

"I feel like I've immersed in Welsh rugby and everything that it means far quicker than if I'd come into a stable environment. Then because everyone cares so much about rugby in Wales everyone's doors have been opened because everyone wants us to be successful.

"That bit has also been surprisingly easy to get engagement and support. The challenge has been getting something that everyone agrees on because there's a wide spectrum of views.

"Will this strategy keep everyone happy? No because I decided we needed a strategy that was going to deliver not a strategy that was watered down with compromise that everyone would be happy with.

"Nobody will disagree with the high level strategy but is more the areas we've prioritised because we don't have unlimited funds." Tierney is well aware this strategy will be her legacy but she is confident she has what it takes to execute it while she maintains she is prepared to make the tough decisions.

"The leadership I bring is one as a compassionate leader," she said. "To me people are everything. So, while I'm data-led and numbers-led I would hope that for me it's all about people.

"Even if I have to make difficult decisions it's about doing that with integrity and fairness in a transparent way. If I'm having to give somebody a difficult message I also try to think how would I want to receive that message if it was me.

"If I lose sleep over everything it's how people are feeling whether that's in my team or elsewhere in the eco-system. I really care about people.

"The only thing I've ever regretted in my career is not making a difficult decision sooner. I rarely regret, once I've made a decision, making it."