Aled Blake: Rejoice, rugby"s cultural monopoly in Wales is at its end

To say tomorrow marks an epoch-making moment in Welsh culture would not be to underplay what’s happening.

An overstatement? I don’t think so. Why?

At the same time in our capital – give or take half an hour – two home teams will kick off important matches. One is Wales’ rugby side as they begin their annual Six Nations campaign, the other is Cardiff City – kicking off their latest Premier League match.

In the one stadium there’ll be empty seats, as embittered, embattled, priced-out fans turn their back on their national team; in the other stadium there’ll be a thrilling, pounding atmosphere in a ground filled with passionate supporters, as players begin the battle to stay in the top flight of English football.

This is a watershed moment, a generational shift, a change in culture when the sport that we’re told defines us begins to crumble under the crushing, compelling truth – that rugby has lost its place at the top of Wales’ cultural tree.

And the obsession with it from certain elites – we in the media, those in government circles, business leaders and whoever else with a modicum of power and influence – is dated and irrelevant.

In fact it is only relevant to people wanting to go on all-day drinking sessions with friends donned in cowboy hats and dressed up as daffodils and the few people who can afford, or who can be bothered to afford, tickets to actually go to the ground and watch the game in the first place.

This time last year some flak came my way because I said I didn’t care about Wales playing rugby, that the importance of the Six Nations is lost on me, that I’d close the curtains if the Welsh side played in my back garden.

My piece on WalesOnline, had some wonderfully insulting comments left by bemused rugby supporters who questioned everything from my existence as a person, to my journalistic credentials.

There’s only ever been one winter sport for me, and I’ve never understood why anyone would ever go out of their way to watch the oval-ball game; its complexities, nuances and – most fundamentally – rules are completely lost on me.

This is the reality for many, not only football fans, but people who don’t give two-hoots about any sport in the first place. As the influence of heavy industry and language diminish on communities, we’ve needed other things to define ourselves.

We’ve used the sport of rugby as a totem, it’s become the thing that the Welsh supposedly obsess about – the national game that binds us. Not only is this a lie, it’s also an unhealthy mistruth.

A people cannot be defined by a sport their national team is fleetingly good at.

A people cannot be defined by a game that is only of import for a couple of months at the beginning of each year.

That’s what we’ve allowed to happen, despite the reality being its slow, interminable decline in the communities where it truly did once matter thanks to the over-ambitious and unsustainable professionalisation of the game.

The recent troubles in rugby in Wales illustrate just how detached it has become from the people and the clubs who really matter.

To say the grassroots of a sport are its lifeblood may be a cliche, but cliches are almost always true.

As Wales’ regional clubs have battled with the Welsh Rugby Union over power and money – and it takes a better, more informed person than me to understand what’s been going on the past few months – the real rugby clubs which serve communities around the country endure their irreversible deaths.

Their financial struggle is not being helped by punitive regulations over their last source of guaranteed revenue, tickets for the Six Nations at the Millennium Stadium.

While Welsh rugby self-cannibalises, Welsh football experiences its renaissance.

The contrast between the two could not be more stark.

Our southern cities all have successful teams with sell-out crowds watching every game.

The Welsh regions can barely muster together the average total Cardiff City attendance at all their home games put together.

The rugby clubs are being financially out-muscled in importance to their parent cities by the football clubs, which are now more and more the places to do business, to network and to be seen.

Tomorrow, for the first time I know of, Wales and Cardiff City play at the same time a mile or so apart from one another.

We never thought it could happen, those times at Ninian Park when we were forced to play on Friday nights because of Wales clashes in the Five or Six Nations.

Sometimes we’d kick off early on a Saturday so people could go home and watch the rugby on the telly if Wales were away.

No, no more is that the case.

For while rugby may still be a national game, its position as national pastime is now over.

A generation is emerging to realise there’s much more to Wales than 15 blokes chasing an egg round a muddy field.

And this will be a better place to live for realising that.

Article source: http://www1.skysports.com/rugby-union/news/12504/9119972/six-nations-chris-robshaw-re-appointed-england-captain

Aled Blake: Rejoice, rugby"s cultural monopoly in Wales is at its end