Relief in Cardiff with ‘catastrophic’ threat of strike in Wales averted

T here is nowhere in the UK like Cardiff on a match day, and nothing in the UK quite like the atmosphere at the Principality Stadium when Wales are playing well. On Friday they were laying out the railings outside Cardiff Central station, ready for the rush, and rolling the last kegs off the lorries into the pub cellars along Westgate and St Mary’s. “If I’m honest, I never really believed the strike was going to go ahead,” says Gary Corp, the landlord at the City Arms, just over the road from the stadium. “It’s money that makes the world go around, isn’t it?” he shouts as he pops back to the cellar, “And there’s too much at stake.”

They say the game’s worth around £10m to the Welsh Rugby Union, and more than double that to the local economy. Back in 2017, it was estimated that a Wales home games generate £26m. It is one of the biggest days of the year here.

“Mind you, it would have been catastrophic for us if they had gone on strike,” Corp admits. The City Arms does triple business when Wales are playing, “more if they win, because everyone slopes off to their local if they lose”. Despite that, like almost everyone else you talk to around the city, Corp was right behind the players. “You can’t not be, when you hear about all those lads who were out of contract, with kids at home, and they couldn’t even get a mortgage,” he says. “It’s all the WRU’s doing, they’ve been a mess for years.”

The players were closer to going on strike than Corp imagines. You can see it in the concessions made by the Union, who came most of the way to meeting all three of the demands for representation on board, the readjustment of a 60-cap rule that limited their ability to play overseas, and renegotiation of the deal that meant 20% of their