Leighton Davies Appointed Chief Commercial Officer
The WRU, that bastion of forward-thinking strategy and inspirational leadership, has completed its much-vaunted “global search” for a new Chief Commercial Officer. They’ve appointed a bloke already lurking in the building. Somewhere between the recycling bin and the vending machine, they found Leighton Davies… again.
For the 3rd time in a year, he’s been wheeled out into a new executive role. Presumably, it’s under the belief that if you throw enough job titles at someone, they might eventually succeed at one. From Chief Financial Officer to Chief Operating Officer, and now Chief Commercial Officer! It’s the corporate equivalent of throwing spaghetti at a wall and promoting whatever sticks.
A Titanic Achievement in Rearranged Seating
Let’s address the elephant in the room—namely, that Davies has achieved precisely nothing of note since joining. The men’s team are still wheezing into mediocrity, the women’s game is desperately underfunded, and the WRU’s commercial output has all the creative flair of a soggy Western Mail. The WRU is sinking faster than an unloved souffle, and rather than fix the gaping holes in the hull, like chronic mismanagement, poor grassroots investment, or the small matter of the men’s game becoming a spectator sport in the worst sense of the word, they’re simply putting lipstick on the Mona Lisa. If this is dynamic commercial innovation, then I’m the Queen of Luxembourg’s personal yodeller called Chardonnay.
A Visionary Choice, If You Squint Hard Enough
There’s something oddly admirable about the WRU’s stubborn refusal to look outside its own echo chamber. It’s like watching someone insist on using a Nokia 3310 to play Netflix. Whilst other unions hire leaders with a history of sporting and commercial success, the WRU promote Dave from Accounts because he once downloaded a PDF all by himself!
But seriously, is this a wind-up? Will he deliver? Unlikely. But that’s never stopped the WRU before. After all, when you’ve got the deck chairs lined up just right, who cares if the ship’s going down? And if that wasn’t enough, we now have Abi Tierney to hammer in the final nail.
And now this?
You could argue that it’s a bold move likening anyone to Liz Truss, the human equivalent of a wilted lettuce. But when it comes to Abi Tierney and the dogs dinner that she has made of the WRU, the comparison, however odious, gleams with a certain perverse logic.
Her qualifications? She once worked in the Home Office—so presumably she’s well acquainted with things falling apart and nobody being held accountable.
Although it’s fair to say she inherited an organisation in enough disarray to make a Primark Sale look organised, she’s done little more than re-arrange the deckchairs on this particular Titanic.
She has, with remarkable consistency, managed to preside over an ongoing shambles. Like Truss, she blew in like a storm of mediocrity, promising the world and delivering a rusty paperclip. She may not have trashed the economy, but she certainly hasn’t rescued Welsh Rugby from its death spiral.
Whilst Truss gave us economic carnage with a side of cringe-inducing photo ops, Tierney’s offering up a brand of rugby administration that feels less like a strategic plan and more like a game of blind man’s buff.
Is she the Liz Truss of Welsh Rugby? Maybe. Both, after all, seem to possess that unique knack of making you yearn for the good old days, even if the good old days were only last Tuesday!
I shall look forward to her memoir, “The Year That Changed Nothing” with bated breath.
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