{"id":323354,"date":"2026-03-01T11:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T11:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/323354\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T11:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T11:54:09","slug":"bernard-jackman-welsh-rugby-is-in-turmoil-on-and-off-the-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/323354\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernard Jackman: Welsh rugby is in turmoil on and off the field"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Lack of investment in grassroots is being felt at Test level\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Wales' Eddie James reacts to Scotland's late winning try. Photo: Dan Istitene\/Getty\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages_2262831269.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Wales&#8217; Eddie James reacts to Scotland&#8217;s late winning try. Photo: Dan Istitene\/Getty<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">If you don\u2019t water the vine then it\u2019s going to wither. Not long after last year\u2019s Six Nations game between Wales and Ireland in Cardiff, I met one of the Welsh starting players at an event. He told me that the match fee had reduced quite significantly since they dropped out of the top 10 in the world rankings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">After tax, and having bought eight tickets for family, he was left with \u00a3420. \u201cWould you tackle Bundee Aki for \u00a3420?\u201d he asked rhetorically. On reflection, I don\u2019t think I would be able to tackle Aki regardless of the fee, but I think it paints a picture as to why a proud nation like Wales will arrive in the Aviva Stadium on Friday night with very little optimism or expectation that they will win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lack of investment in grassroots is being felt at Test level Wales&#8217; Eddie James reacts to Scotland&#8217;s late&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,898,112],"class_list":["post-323354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news-ticker","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}