Ioan Cunningham seems prone to depart his place as Wales ladies’s head coach after the Welsh Rugby Union’s chaotic dealing with of recent contracts for its feminine gamers was closely criticised, Mail Sport understands.
Cunningham has been answerable for Wales’ ladies’s workforce since 2021 having beforehand been males’s Wales Underneath-20 boss and forwards guru with the Scarlets.
WRU sources have insisted Cunningham stays in his function as issues stand.
However whereas Cunningham’s departure hasn’t formally been confirmed, all indicators level to him being the primary WRU worker to pay the worth for what the organisation’s chairman Richard Collier-Keywood final week admitted was one other blow to its status.
Wales’ ladies’s gamers signed recent phrases on skilled offers earlier this yr.
But it surely has since emerged that in the course of the re-contracting course of, the gamers had been threatened with disciplinary motion and being pulled out of tournaments if they didn’t agree.
Ioan Cunningham (above) seems prone to depart his place as Wales ladies’s head coach
The pinnacle coach (left) is ready to grow to be the primary WRU worker to pay the worth for the WRU’s chaotic dealing with of recent contracts for its feminine gamers, which has been closely criticised
The Each day Telegraph reported the stress left gamers feeling ‘emotionally unwell’ and the method coincided with a poor run of outcomes on the pitch.
WRU govt director of rugby Nigel Walker led the re-contracting course of and is known to have informed the gamers they’d three hours to ink new offers.
If they didn’t, they’d not be allowed to play. Regardless of Walker laying down that ultimatum, it’s understood it’s Cunningham who’s prone to depart first.
The WRU has undertaken an in depth overview of how the negotiation course of was carried out and its suggestions might be printed in full later this month.
However the WRU hierarchy of chief govt Abi Tierney and Collier-Keywood look set to behave by eradicating Cunningham. Walker’s future can also be unclear at this stage after the WRU held a board assembly on Tuesday. Collier-Keywood, Tierney, and impartial WRU board members Alison Thorne and Claire Donovan final week denied allegations of sexism over how Wales’ feminine gamers had been handled. There was no such allegation from the gamers themselves. Thorne and Donovan have led the overview.
Mail Sport’s makes an attempt to contact Cunningham immediately had been unsuccessful.
Collier-Keywood mentioned of the ladies’s contractual saga final week: ‘This isn’t a superb day for us, we completely settle for that. Undoubtedly, that is reputationally damaging for us.
‘We should always have performed higher and we didn’t, however we’ve got realized our classes and we are going to hold attempting to enhance.
Richard Collier-Keywood (proper) admitted the contractual saga was ‘reputationally damaging’
‘There are some sweeping criticisms within the report in addition to some sturdy suggestions of what we have to do in another way.
‘It’s completely clear we do have to apologise and interact with them (the gamers) over the suggestions.’
The bungled dealing with of girls’s contracts was a extreme blow to the brand new WRU regime of Collier-Keywood and Tierney who had been appointed after a sequence of previous sexism and misogyny points led to the departure of former chief govt Steve Phillips. Within the mild of that current historical past, there was shock that such the same state of affairs might have occurred once more.
Tierney final week introduced the WRU is rising funding of girls’s rugby by £6million, to a complete of £26m over the following 5 years.
