Tessa Jowell told Labour party conference in 2003: ‘We want everyone to feel that sport can be a vital part of their lives… because a good sport policy is also a good education policy, a good health policy and good anti-crime policy.’ She went on to claim that ‘we are putting in place the foundations in schools and communities.’
It certainly is true that the government has reversed the abstentionist policies of the Conservatives, especially in relation to school facilities, but it is arguable that the record is more patchy than ministers might be comfortable with, and that it is the community part of the equation that demands the most attention.
Changes to the rules on rates for amateur sports clubs are helpful for those clubs, but semi-professional clubs derive no such benefit. There have been great strides forward, to be sure. Since 1999 the government has, through Supporters Direct, helped fans of over 100 soccer clubs playing in the English and Scottish leagues set up independent supporters trusts. At some clubs the trusts have taken control, turning professional soccer teams into mutual organisations for the first time in decades. Elsewhere trusts have fought for the right of supporters to be represented on the board of the clubs.
As an investment of government money it has been effective, appropriate and successful. The problem is the limited imagination involved.
The world has changed since 1999. The collapse in the value of broadcast rights has transformed the agenda. No longer do investors flock to sport with a vision of there being a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Instead there are hard decisions being taken with the intention of keeping clubs alive.
There have been surprising developments as times have changed. For every Manchester United Supporters Trust with its celebrity members, there is a Dulwich Hamlet, eager to link prosperity for a side in the lower leagues with developments that could benefit the whole community.
That collapse in the value of broadcasting rights has not been across the board. Whilst some soccer sides have prospered, rugby union sides have pauperized themselves since the onset of professionalism, despite more money flowing into the sport than ever before. In England, individual clubs like Richmond and Bristol have foundered. In Wales, the entire edifice of rugby has wavered and tottered; club names that once struck fear into opponents around the world now strike fear only into the hearts of accountants and bank managers.
Many Welsh rugby grounds owe their existence to community-based organisations. Stadium names like ‘The Welfare Ground’ acknowledge the part groups like miners’ welfare clubs played in providing sports facilities. As the game has gone professional so the link to communities has been broken or has withered. Towns like Ebbw Vale and Abertillery face not merely the economic aftershocks of the demise of coal and steel but a loss of sports clubs and facilities that have defined their communities.
What is needed in Wales is not merely money for Supporters Direct to repeat the work they have done in English soccer, but to take it a stage further implied by the plans of Dulwich Hamlet. Welsh rugby needs a makeover from the bottom up, to recreate the human and community capital that was neglected in the headlong rush to professionalism in the 1990s.
The Industrial and Provident Society structure utilized by supporters trusts is ideal for stakeholders seeking to regenerate community facilities. In many towns a large facility purely for the rugby club may no longer be viable, but a partnership between a local authority, the owners of the rugby club and the community is hard to envisage under the current arrangements. With a mutual organisation at the heart of the operation there would exist accountability, a framework and a democratic organisation that could unite all stakeholders.
Rhodri Morgan made much in a speech of Wales’ status as a learning laboratory for the rest of Britain. The special circumstances of Welsh rugby make it an ideal test bed for the development of a new model of community sports provision via the trust model, mixing professional sport with community regeneration and the development of a new generation of community entrepreneurs.
That’s why Supporters Direct ought to bid to the Welsh assembly for £100,000 over two years, to fund a new programme of work in Wales. It would be a project not just about the rugby and soccer clubs of South Wales, but about every sports club trying to survive in an era when old definitions of public and private, amateur and professional, community and culture need reshaping and regeneration.