The old cliche tells us it’s tough at the top, and it can be, but it can also be brutally difficult at the bottom.
Ask Tata Steel RFC.
They are currently propping up what’s been called Welsh rugby’s toughest league, the Admiral Championship. In it, relatively well-financed clubs go up against others whose pockets are nowhere near as deep. “Big budgets against next to no budgets,” one observer of the community scene suggested earlier this season.
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Hit a rough patch and the consequences can be severe.
Tata encountered injury problems that left them stretched to breaking point against Cross Keys and ended up on the wrong end of a 100-6 scoreline. They also conceded 11 tries in a 69-8 beating against Neath and were defeated 57-7 by Ystrad Rhondda.
They have leaked 312 points from five league outings this term.
In the run up to the campaign starting they had a mass exodus of players.
Problems, problems, problems all day long.
Their secretary Mark Williams said the club were doing their best amid a challenging situation.
“It’s been difficult this year because we lost so many players in pre-season,” said Williams.
“We’re at the point now where we are just about up to where we need to be in terms of squad numbers — perhaps we still need to strengthen in a few positions.
“We’ve been in the Championship in the decade or so since it was formed. There has always been a mixture of teams in the division, including some who people might class as Premiership-stanadard sides, if you like. We’ve seen Swansea and Ebbw Vale in there at various points, now we have Pontypool, Neath, Bargoed, Bedwas, Cross Keys.
“So it’s a tough league and it’s tougher than usual this year because of what’s at stake at the end of the season, with two teams being promoted to the Premiership. Clubs have invested in their squads for this campaign and it makes it quite difficult, then, when you play against them.”
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Tata’s visit to Keys made headlines as the Gwent club piled up 16 tries and a century of points in a single game for the first time in their history.
Yet two weeks earlier, Keys themselves shipped 56 points at home to Pontypool.
We will have to presume the scorers would have had a busy afternoon had Tata faced Pooler a week after their loss to Keys. But the Port Talbot club couldn’t raise a team.
To their credit, though, they have tried hard to honour their fixtures.
“We went up to Bargoed in the cup a few weeks back. Injuries meant we knew we weren’t going to do well, but we wanted to play,” says Williams.
“I contacted Bargoed and the WRU and told them we were prepared to forfeit the cup round because of our circumstances, but we just wanted a game. The WRU, to be fair to them, suggested we play it as a friendly and Bargoed were very good and agreed to accommodate us.
“Because it was a friendly, we were allowed to permit more than the four we would normally be allowed to bring in. We went up there with a bare 15 and six of those players were lads we’d permitted in from wherever we could get players.
“The Championship is splitting into east and west next season and there’ll be no relegation unless a club can’t fulfil their fixtures. So we are doing all we can on that front.”
Williams continues: “I was away for the Cross Keys game, but people who were there say we were doing well until half-time, then we had three players taken to hospital. One had dislocated his shoulder, one had a grade 3 tear in his calf muscle and another had a dislocated thumb which required a reconstruction.
“For the second half, we were playing with 12 men.
“You can’t do that against a side as well drilled as Cross Keys. They just cut us open.
“So that’s why there was a big score.
“Last weekend was the first of the season when we’ve actually put out a full squad of our own players. Some of the boys were actually disappointed they weren’t in the matchday squad, but then we had two pull-outs on Saturday morning and were lucky enough to pull two of our own players into the group that played the game.”
A bit of background.
Tata reportedly did not receive payments from the WRU last season because they opted out of signing Welsh rugby’s 'Statement of Truth', which meant they were free to pay their players but did not have access to any union funding to do it. They also decided against signing it for the two years that preceded the Covid-19 pandemic.
Whatever their situation on that front this term, the odds have been stacked against them.
They came up against a Neath side boasting former Wales World Cup player Aled Brew recently, which put their own struggles into perspective, but they haven’t complained.
“The big names get to pull bigger sponsors in, so they can attract bigger players,” says Williams.
“You are always going to get that. Players, in my opinion, should always look to play at the highest level they can play at. When some of the top players come to the end of their best years, do they just walk away from the game or do they look to carry on playing at the highest level that they can? Aled has done that. He’s been there, he’s done it. He still wants to carry on playing, so good luck to him.
“He played against us a few weeks ago. He wasn’t the player he was at his best, but you wouldn’t expect him to be. He’s still a very good player and Neath are lucky to have him.
“At the other end of it, good young players are always going to try to see how far they can go. We lose players to Premiership sides every year and they go with our blessing, because ultimately the Championship is a shop window. We have no problem with that. It’s how rugby is. Players go on and try to do bigger and better things.”
Tata are not flush with big money themselves, then? Williams laughs: “We’d like to be, but we’re not.
“It is what it is.
“Others have people behind them who are in a position to help out.
“A lot of people think the steelworks back us, but we don’t get anything off Tata. In fact, we have to pay for the facilities. It costs us money every year for the lease of the pitch and the changing rooms.
“We work hard for everything we’ve got.
“But there’s no animosity in the Championship.
“Of course, a few would like to be in the same position as the Pontypools and the Bargoeds, but it is what it is. If someone turned around and said to us, we want to put X amount of money into your club for the rest of the season, we wouldn’t say no. So there’s no grudges or whatever. Best of luck to them. “
The challenges started for Tata before the first kick-off of the 2022-23 campaign. “We had good numbers at the start of pre-season, with a few new boys. Then, through work commitments and people taking holidays, the numbers started dropping off, winding up a few more boys who said we weren’t getting enough people at training,” says Williams.
“Then we had people heading for different clubs for different reasons.
“A week to 10 days before the season started, we lost nine boys almost all at once.
“Plenty of other clubs in Welsh rugby are finding it tough going. Someone said there were 37 games called off one week.
“We have a core of players who’ve been with us all the way through. We’ve sat down and told them we’re trying to bring players in, and we have brought players in, but we still need to recruit a few more and we’re looking for a fresh start in the new year.
“We haven’t taken a backward step in scrums and lineouts, so we have a foundation to work on.
“Hopefully, things will start to fall into place.”
Commendable optimism considering the circumstances.
But when the odds turn against a club, it can be hard to turn the situation around, and particularly in mid-season.
Tata will hope they can steady matters and fulfil their fixtures.
Just maybe, tomorrow will bring better times.
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