WRU postpones revamp of leading women's teams
Since the WRU took over financially-stricken Cardiff in April, the Arms Park club and Dragons have signed a new agreement with the governing body, but a split has emerged with the possibility of Ospreys and Scarlets entering a legal dispute with the governing body.That scenario has left the long-term future of the west Wales teams in doubt, with options including them continuing, but on less funds than their east Wales rivals.Speculation has also included the possibility of Welsh men's professional rugby being reduced to three or two teams.
Any reduction in the men's game would impact the options for where new women's teams could be based.The email from WRU head of women's rugby Belinda Moore states: "We have made the decision that Brython Thunder and Gwalia Lightning will continue to represent Wales in the flagship tournament next season."We have taken this in the best interest of our players and management teams and believe this is the right way to guarantee a professional elite sporting environment for our players in the necessary timeframe. "It remains central to the WRU's strategy to grow marketable and commercially viable high-performance clubs for our women players in Wales and we will revisit this in the near future."I would like to thank all parties for the work they have done to date during the tender process, it is not wasted, and we look forward to picking this up again in earnest at the appropriate time."The WRU has confirmed the development in its domestic women's game with Moore stating: "In a pivotal year for the women's game, with the 2025 Rugby World Cup in England this autumn, we are making sure a stable, centrally supported high-performance environment is underpinning our senior women's squad."Many of Wales' top internationals play for English sides in the Premiership Women's Rugby (PWR) league with the Celtic Challenge competition set up in 2023 to help develop players in Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
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North Wales Chronicle
4 hours ago
- North Wales Chronicle
Wales have belief to cause upset against England, says Angharad James
Wales have the belief to cause an upset against defending European champions England in St. Gallen, according to captain Angharad James. Currently sitting bottom of Group D, Wales have yet to win a match at Euro 2025 having fallen to defeat against the Netherlands and France in their first major tournament. But as the Dragons face a crunch clash with rivals England, James believes her side can get one over the Lionesses and knock them out of the competition. 'The pressure is all on England. They have to come out, they have to perform and they're expected to win this game,' she explained. 'Within our group, we believe that we can upset a very top team. We've prepared as normal and we're ready for the fight tomorrow. 'There's no hiding behind the history of Wales vs England. Whatever sport you're playing in, it's a rivalry match and it's one that everyone wants to play in. 'As a group, we've come on so much since the first game and the second game was such a big improvement from us. We're looking to step it up again in this game.' Having lost 3-0 to the Netherlands in the opening match, Wales made history in the second game through 38-year-old Jess Fishlock. The Dragons legend latched onto Ceri Holland's pass at the back post to turn home the first major international tournament goal in Wales' history. It saw them equalise against France in the 13th minute but Les Bleues went on to win 4-1. 'Moments win or lose you games,' reflected James. 'We've been so close to those moments. Looking at the game it's 4-1 against France, but it wasn't a 4-1 game if you watch the game. 'Those small margins are what we need to work towards as a group and we're prepared to have those honest and hard conversations to make sure that we keep improving and keep moving in the right direction.' MD-1 preparation! 💪 — Wales 🏴 (@Cymru) July 12, 2025 The Wales squad have been turning to history in search of those small moments. In 2018, the national team held England to a 0-0 draw at St. Mary's Stadium in Southampton, leaving Jayne Ludlow to hail it the greatest performance in their history at the time. Ten members of the current squad were involved in that performance and have been drawing inspiration from the embattled display in the hopes of pulling off a result of an even greater magnitude. 'You don't forget when you get a result against England, that's for sure,' said James. 'We've spoken about it and a lot of time has gone on since then and new players have come into the squad. 'We've got a nice mixture of younger players, more experienced players and there's a really nice blend within the group.' Just as back then, midfielder James is expecting another physical contest against an England side who need a win to ensure their progression to the Euro 2025 quarter-finals. 'As soon as this group got announced, we knew they were going to be three tough games, three very competitive games and three games that, as a midfielder, you love to play in,' she said. 'This group has come very far the last few games and we're looking to step it up again against England. 'The rivalry, the history behind Wales-England, whether it's football, rugby, whatever, we're ready for the fight. 'We'll be preparing the best we can in the next 24 hours to bring all of that.'
BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
Trump's tariffs add to fears in the UK's struggling steel towns
Ryan Davies worked at the Port Talbot steelworks for 33 years and from his very first day, he heard rumours that the plant was on the verge of closing. Whispers would spread among his colleagues about new ownership and redundancies. Usually, they weren't true."You took it with a pinch of salt," he was an exhausting job. He remembers the clanging of metal and the high-pitched whining of steam, as well as the fear of gas leaks. In the summer it became "excruciatingly" hot inside the plant and his shifts lasted 12 hours. But he also valued his job. Being a steelworker was part of his a few years ago, he heard a new rumour: that Tata Steel, the plant's Indian owners, was to close its blast furnaces. This one turned out to be true. The two furnaces were switched off in July and September last year, part of a restructure that would ultimately remove around 2,000 jobs, half of the number employed there. "It was the end of it all - the end of 100 years of steelmaking in Port Talbot," says Mr Davies, who took voluntary redundancy in November. He is 51 now and unsure about his own future, and what the news means for his wife and his 19-year-old daughter. But he also worries deeply about Port Talbot. Steel is integral to the town's identity. The bronze-coloured chimneys loom across the skyline; the first thing you see as you drive towards the town from the M4. Steel, Mr Davies says, was "the whole reason Port Talbot was ever a successful town".It is a similar story across the handful of other British communities that historically relied on steelmaking as a source of employment. As well as Port Talbot, they include places like Redcar in North Yorkshire and Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire. At its peak around 1970, the UK's steel industry produced more than 26 million tonnes of steel each year and employed more than 320,000 people. Then came the long decline. Now just four million tonnes are produced each year, with fewer than 40,000 in the last few years, the industry has entered a particularly difficult period, thanks in part to rising energy prices. The ongoing uncertainty about tariffs on steel exports to the US is not helping. This has frayed nerves and cost the UK steel industry orders from US companies, according to steel industry executives. While 27.5% tariffs on cars were reduced to 10% and tariffs on aerospace products were lowered to zero, a 25% tariff on UK steel and aluminium exports to the US is still in officials say they are determined to reduce steel tariffs to zero too, and talks are ongoing. But this all adds to a sense of foreboding on the ground in steel what comes next if UK steel manufacturing really does near extinction? And where does that leave places like Port Talbot and Redcar that have so much of their identity bound up in their industrial history? The 'wilderness' ghost steel towns If you want to peer into a post-steel future, look at Redcar on the northeast coast - an area sometimes described as Britain's "rust belt", owing to the derelict industrial sites scattered across the steel industry emerged in the mid-19th Century and went on to employ more than 40,000 people. It has long been a point of local pride that the Sydney Harbour Bridge was built from Teesside along with other steel towns, it suffered in the latter half of the 20th Century. Cheap imports from China created tough competition. Britain moved from a manufacturing to a service-based economy - and towns like Redcar were left behind. In 1987, Margaret Thatcher walked with a handbag through a nearby derelict wasteland; a photograph of the "wilderness" visit became a symbol of industrial hardship. More recently, the steel industry has struggled under the weight of the UK's relatively high energy prices (which makes it expensive to heat a furnace). Some analysts also say that the UK's drive towards decarbonisation is raising costs for steel 2015, the Thai owners of Redcar's steelworks pulled the plug. Sue Jeffrey, then Labour leader of Redcar Council, remembers watching the blast furnace in action, on one of its final days in use. "It was one of the most devastating things I've been involved in," she 2,000 workers lost their jobs at the site, with thousands more affected through the steel supply chain. Local businesses were hit too; B&Bs have lost custom from the contractors no longer visiting the area. The council set up a task force to help former steelworkers into new jobs. It saw some success. Of the more than 2,000 steelworkers who made an initial claim for benefits when the plant closed, the vast majority had come off benefits within three years, according to a council report published in Ms Jeffrey argues that many could not find jobs that made use of their industrial skills. Some became dog walkers and decorators; others, chimney sweeps. Many, she says, accepted a large cut in same tale has been told in other steel towns; laid-off worker forced to find new are delighted with the change. After his redundancy, Ryan Davies decided to pursue his dream since boyhood: street art. He now runs a business, painting murals of ladybirds, ducks and mythical creatures. Though his income is lower, he finds it fulfilling. "I've been a far happier person since I left," he says. "When you've got a grey wall and you paint something colourful, it makes people smile."But not everyone is so Walker-Hunt, 28, opened a coffee shop in Port Talbot last year after taking redundancy from the town's steelworks, using a £7,500 loan from Tata Steel to buy professional coffee-making equipment."I've been working around the clock just to survive," he says today. The fight to keep blast furnaces burning The job security that steelmaking once offered is one reason unions argue it's imperative to keep the industry Davies, national secretary at the Community Union, the largest union for steelworkers, thinks governments should step in when required to keep blast furnaces exactly what happened earlier this year in Scunthorpe, the last place in the UK that makes virgin steel from melting iron ore in blast has lurched from crisis to crisis. The last government took control when it was on the brink of going bust and - £600million of UK taxpayer support later - sold it to Chinese company Jingye. Now it is back in government control. The government was forced to intervene after Jingye failed to order vital supplies to keep the furnaces here, Scunthorpe's future is uncertain. Some have urged the Labour government to fully nationalise the Jonathon Carruthers-Green, an analyst at steel consultancy MEPS International, believes that ministers will be wary of that option because of the huge potential costs and complications. Alternatively, the plant could be sold to a different foreign buyer. But, asks Mr Carruthers-Green, "Who is going to come along and start making steel in the UK, where there's higher [energy] costs, where there's all sorts of issues around decarbonisation?"Scunthorpe resident, Sean Robinson, told the BBC earlier this year that he fears the town will become another steel "ghost town". A question of Trump's tariffs Looming large over all of this is the question of what will become of Trump's tariffs and how it will impact UK good news is that the UK was exempted from a surprise hike on those tariffs from 25 to 50% last month, and trade officials seem confident that they will also be unaffected by the new deferred date of 1 August, which is when the White House says its most swingeing tariffs on US trading partners will come into steel companies are still frustrated that the original plan to reduce tariffs on UK steel to zero is yet to be agreed. There are two sticking points. The first, according to steel industry sources, is that US trade negotiators are overwhelmed with the sheer volume of work to get through when negotiating with the rest of the world simultaneously. But the second, and the reason steel was not waved through alongside cars and planes, is that there are concerns in the US that the UK's largest steel maker Tata no longer makes steel from scratch. Having closed its blast furnaces, it no longer "melts and pours" the steel but rather imports virgin steel from India to be modified in the UK, leading to some questions in the US as to whether it even counts as UK if and when a zero-tariff deal is done on steel, it is likely to include quotas above which tariffs will be charged, putting a ceiling on future growth in exports to the US. Is 'romanticism' blocking sensible debate? There is, however, a bigger, more profound question that steel towns must wrestle with. In a post-industrial age, what exactly are these places for? And, should they try to reignite the embers of their dying steel trade - or pivot to a new industry of the future?Some trade union leaders maintain that steel towns can, in effect, remain steel towns. With the right investment in green technologies, Mr Davies of the Community Union thinks, a new, cleaner steel industry could emerge."Imagine Port Talbot without any steelworkers - it's unthinkable," he says. But others think that view is unrealistic. Paul Swinney, a director at the Centre for Cities think tank, argues that there is a certain romanticism in the debate around steel that blocks sensible thinking."I think it's wrapped up in what some people perceive as being 'good jobs,'" he says. "You did a hard day's graft, you got your hands dirty, and you felt like you'd contributed. [But that framing] just isn't helpful."As he sees it, "there's no plausible route forward which is going to have more of these kinds of jobs. "The UK economy has changed," he he believes towns like Port Talbot and Redcar should look to industries of the future. Industries of the future Redcar is already taking steps in this direction. The derelict land that once housed the town's steelworks is now at the centre of an ambitious redevelopment led by the South Tees Development Corporation. The old steelmaking structures have been flattened to make way for renewable energy and carbon capture and managers of the Teesworks project say they have created more than 2,000 "long-term" jobs - and they hope to create 20,000 in last year, a central government review criticised "inappropriate decisions and a lack of transparency" at the corporation, and looked at why private property developers had ended up owning a large amount of the site. Tees Valley Conservative Mayor Lord Houchen, who at that point chaired the corporation, said he "welcomed" the panel's recommendations to improve transparency. Speaking on local radio in May, he said the Teesworks project has provided "billions of pounds of investment for the region".But Mr Swinney of Centre for Cities says we need to think bigger still. Rather than trying to recreate their industrial glory, steel towns may want to lean into white-collar, knowledge economy jobs - the sort of work that made many city centres comparatively key is to improve transport from steel towns to cities, where office jobs tend to be located, he says. But ex-steelworker Ryan Davies laughs at the suggestion of steelworkers slipping seamlessly into office jobs. "When you come from an environment of 33 years of steelworking, going into an office is such a radical difference," he are other challenges too: people in steel towns tend to have fewer formal qualifications - often essential for office work. For example, about 37% of working-age adults in Port Talbot have the equivalent of one year of university education, versus a UK average of 49%. A slow death vs hope for the future Ultimately, the future of these towns may rest on the wider fate of the UK's steel industry. And there is some cause for optimism. The government insists that Scunthorpe and the rest of the UK steel industry has a future, not least because of the big increase in spending on a steel-intensive defence Carruthers-Green thinks that the UK's decarbonisation drive could also eventually play to steel's advantage. With more investment in green energy, he says, there will be further demand for the sort of high-quality steel used in things like wind turbines. This, in turn, creates more energy, lowering prices for steel producers. "The hope is we can get into this virtuous spiral," he adds. Gareth Stace, director general of the trade group UK Steel, is a little more cautious, however. There's a "worst case" scenario where the UK "continue[s] to make less and less and less, he he puts it, "We don't go out of business in one bang". Instead, there's a slow he also believes that with some tailored policies, steel could be revived even in this scenario. In particular, he wants to see action on energy prices, as well as policies on procurement in which government departments buy more steel from the UK instead of from abroad."If it works," he says, "for the first time in a very, very long time, we'll actually have some hope for the future."Additional reporting: David Macmillan BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.
Leader Live
5 hours ago
- Leader Live
Rhian Wilkinson insists Wales not just at Euro 2025 to participate
Wales sit on the brink of a Euro 2025 exit having failed to pick up a point during their time in Switzerland so far, but Wilkinson was keen to impress just how remarkable an achievement it was for the side to even be at the tournament in the first place. But though she wants to accentuate the positives, the Wales manager was also far from rolling over for England as her side look to make an impact in their remaining game. 'I don't think many people inside women's football understand that we're here for the first time and we're here to make an impact,' said Wilkinson. 'Part of that is celebrating our firsts so we were able to celebrate Jess [Fishlock]'s goal twice thanks to VAR. All these moments are important to celebrate. 'Those countries that are fortunate enough to have the player pool to expect regularly to qualify for these events have forgotten what an achievement it is to be at the pinnacle of the game at these major events. 'These women have fought so hard for so long to have this opportunity and I will not allow us to feel like we're just here to participate, so we will continue to celebrate.' MD-1 preparation! 💪 Wales fell to a 3-0 defeat in their opening Euro 2025 match against the Netherlands but grew into the tournament to get off to a strong start against a rotated France side. While France took an early lead, Fishlock's 13th-minute equaliser not only represented Wales' first-ever major tournament goal but also put them back on level terms with a side expected to go far at the Euros. Wilkinson's side could not hold out as they fell to 4-1 loss, but she hopes the side will take a key lesson from both games as they head into a crunch clash with England. '[I want them to play with] freedom and courage. We've talked about it all the time. I love watching this team when they start to find their flow,' she said. 'That's what we want to see another time. Our fan base has been incredible and we're so grateful for it so the very least that we can do is show up and give it everything we've got. 'They're on the journey with us and they understand they're here to celebrate something historic. We hope it's a win.' That win will be made all the more special if it comes over neighbours England. It is a rivalry embedded deep into the two side's footballing history. Though Wilkinson may be Canadian, a fierce contest with those in geographical proximity is something she understands well, though she has been keen not to let the players get ahead of themselves. 'I understand the grudge match with my neighbours [the USA],' she said. 'We're preparing like we do every game. I've not let them talk about this England game until we were finished at the French game. 'But equally, for me, this is another incredible challenge. I can't pretend there's not history there. I have read a book. 'For these women, it's acknowledging it and not letting it get bigger than it needs to be. 'This is going to be a wonderful opportunity for women's football and for two nations, neighbours, to put on a display for our families.'
