The future of Cardiff Arms Park is still less clear than the contents of a Clark’s Pie. Rob Cole peers under the crust and says there is plenty to chew on, but one side has to be prepared to swallow hard.
Ever since Richard Holland took over as the chief executive at Cardiff Blues just over six years ago his in-tray has been dominated by one issue – the re-development of Cardiff Arms Park.
Seen as the way to inject much needed cash into the ailing Blues, plans for a £150m regeneration scheme cannot move forward unless the Cardiff Athletic Club agrees to assign the lease on the Arms Park to the Blues for the next 150 years.
On a number of occasions in recent years Holland thought he was getting there. A year ago there was a joint statement from the two parties that looked like ended with the EGM the Blues’ boss has been seeking to get the lease under the control of his board.
An £8m sweetener was offered to CAC, with the guarantee of £200,000 annual funding for Cardiff’s Premiership rugby side over the course of the lease, but still no solution has been forthcoming. Now, though, it looks as though battle lines are being re-drawn.
At a meeting of the management board of CAC tonight there will be discussion on a new way forward, a joint-venture that will seek to keep rugby at the very heart of everything that happens on Wales’ most sacred sporting site. The future of rugby as a whole in Cardiff, not merely the cash-starved Blues, is now at the top of the agenda.
Missing from tonight’s gathering will be Cardiff RFC chairman Chris Norman, who has stood like a beacon in recent discussions in ensuring common sense, rather than vested interest, prevailed. The lease on the Arms Park is due to revert back to CAC in 2022.
Largely at Norman’s instigation, the Rugby Section of CAC drafted 10 basic principles to guide them through any discussions on the way forward with the Blues. These will be discussed tonight and include:
- A new debt-free company run jointly by CAC and the Cardiff Blues to manage the redevelopment and all rugby matters
- Retaining professional and semi-professional rugby at the ground, with the new company responsible for both team’s success
- While there will be significant commercial developments, rugby will take precedence over other events
- All sides based at the stadium must retain Cardiff in their title and wear the team’s traditional colours
- A formula for sharing profits equally among shareholders must be agreed
There is also a strong feeling that the chairman of any new company must come from the CAC delegates on the board. Quite where this leaves current Blues chairman, Peter Thomas, is anyone’s guess.
As for Holland, as much as he has tried to get the redevelopment over the line, he has thus far failed. And if he does succeed before 2022 it doesn’t look as though it will be on terms that resemble anything like what was initially proposed.
With loans of up to £20m in the Blues accounts, some £12m of which is owed to Thomas, and a wage bill in excess of £5m pa, the financial future of Wales’ capital region looks wholly dependent on more hand-outs from the WRU and an improved TV and sponsorship deal at PRO14 level.
You get the feeling that however much more money they are given, it will never be enough to keep pace with the big spending clubs in France and England. Time for a new approach, new thinking and a proper plan to develop local talent.
That is going to be painful to begin with and there won’t be many cups to polish in the immediate future. But the pain will be infinitely less excruciating than that currently being felt 12 miles down the road at Newport, where one of the world’s greatest rugby names has lost its home of 140 years and is facing a bleak future with no ground to call its own and a mere £600,000 in the bank.
