Last weekend, I took my godchildren to Scarlets v Glasgow at Parc y Scarlets, and it was the best time I’ve had at a rugby match in a while.
In terms of the match itself, it was a brave display by the home side. Glasgow always looked in control, but with all the injuries that Scarlets have had and the big names that weren’t playing, they also performed really well.
But my lasting memory of the game will not be any individual moment on the field, but rather the absolutely wonderful atmosphere inside the stadium, and the positivity that radiated from it. There were nearly 13,000 of us in there, with the huge crowd singing Calon Lan and Hymns and Arias throughout the game.
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My godchildren, Efan aged six, and his brothers Ioan, 12, and Elis, 14, were absolutely loving it and they were far from the only youngsters inside the stadium. In fact, there were rows of kids there and you could see they were so excited to be there watching their heroes playing on the pitch in front of them.
It was a fantastic experience to be a part of, a real throwback really, and it got me thinking about the future of rugby in Wales.
Now there has been plenty of debate around Welsh rugby, particularly the regional game, in recent weeks and months. But the fact of the matter is, whether you’re for the 25 cap rule, against it or you’re just not bothered about it, we all want to see these big occasions happening in Wales with buzzing atmospheres and huge crowds on a regular basis - and something needs to be done to make that a reality.
Quite simply, we need our regions to be as strong as possible, with the best Welsh players playing in Wales.
When you can perform at that kind of level whether that’s in the URC or the European Cup, and get to the knockout stages, it really does build up the appetite of the fans. But if our players are not playing in Wales and are in England, Japan or France instead, then we’re simply not going to reach those kinds of games and have these big occasions.
To me, it’s important because no matter what people say, unless you have your heroes and your big name players playing for your region, you’re not going to be as successful, you just won’t get to these big games. As well as that, if you want kids to come down and support their local club and fill a stadium while you’re at it, you’re going to need something to get them down there. Saturday night showed me that if you can get that right, you will fill stadiums.
The salary cap is a different discussion, but for me it’s plain and simple - whatever it takes, whatever we need to do to get our regions strong and get our best players playing in Wales, we need to do it. We’ve already seen in the last week or so how we can lose out on promising players who choose to go on and play outside of Wales.
Joe Hawkins is a great player, but he should be playing in Wales. I’m not telling him what he should be doing, of course, as there are plenty of other things you need to factor into his decision to move to Exeter Chiefs, a move which has seen him ruled out of Warren Gatland’s World Cup squad.
It’s understandable why he moved, people always say we should let players go and play wherever they want and obviously yes, you need to have that freedom to choose at the end of the day. It’s a short career and you’ve got to enjoy it while you last and take those opportunities, especially if they are going to help you out in the future too. Exeter is a great club and I have a huge amount of respect for them and Joe. I know he will make a success of himself there.
But at the same time, it feels like such a waste losing Joe from the Welsh game, and that’s why we need to do all we can to keep talents like him here.
It all starts with the players, at the end of the day. Without those names on our regions’ team-sheets, fans aren’t going to come down in their droves, kids aren’t going to be overly interested in watching.
Whatever needs to be done, we need to do it. Having had a glimpse of how wonderful our regional game could be on Saturday night, we should be aiming for nothing less.
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