// The Perils Of Working For A Guitar Mag//

So I work for a guitar magazine, it’s pretty cool. In fact, I work for the finest guitar magazine in the whole goddamned world, if I do say so myself, which is even cooler.

But it’s not all drinking lager and playing expensive guitars all day… and even when it is, it’s not perhaps as fun as you think it might be.

When I tell people, particularly other guitar players, that I work for a guitar magazine, the default response is something along the lines of, “Wow that must be so cool to just play guitar whenever you want and stuff!”

Well… yeah… kinda.

Y’see, while I am constantly surrounded by a steady stream of guitars that cost as much as a small family car, I don’t really like playing them very often. Why? Well, let me explain what happened roughly 20 minutes ago.

Encountering a spare few minutes in our deadline day hell, I picked up the PRS Se Bernie Marsden sitting on one of the stands in our office, and began to quietly muddle my way through a few shitty attempts at John Mayer and SRV before putting it down and cracking on.

10 minutes later, our astonishingly talented editor Mick picks up the self same guitar, and bangs out exactly the same riffs I’d been fumbling over with confidence, precision, feel, tone… everything.

Now, I don’t think he did this on purpose to make me feel bad or anything like that, he’s a big Mayer/SRV fan too, but holy jesus, it doesn’t half make you feel like a shit guitar player…

And thus we come to the problem of working for a guitar mag… Guitarists have a thing we call ‘guitar shop syndrome’ where the presence of so many gorgeous guitars and a variety of like-minded people causes you to forget every song you’ve ever learned and generally play like Django Reinhardt with the rest of his fingers removed…

Working at Guitarist makes you feel like that all day, every day - I hate playing guitar in the office because everywhere I look I’m surrounded by people who are so, so much better than I am that I just feel like I’m polluting the air with my widdlings, and my general playing confidence has evaporated as a result.

So, working for a guitar magazine - every guitarist’s dream, but not always all it’s cracked up to be…

// Welsh Domestic Rugby 1871-2012//

Welsh rugby is dying. In truth it’s been on its last legs for a few years now. Like a beloved pet that you can’t bear to part with, the WRU has kept the regional game in Wales going, but the old dog is now incontinent, arthritic, blind… and my god, the smell… perhaps it would be more humane to just put it out of its misery.

First up – I should clarify that I’m not a disgruntled Ponty fan who has been gleefully watching in the hope that regional rugby anything like that. I’m a fully paid up member of the Regional Rugby Is A Good Idea Club and a passionate Ospreys fan, so this isn’t easy for me to accept, but here it is:

Maybe the solution to sort out the chronic problems with professional rugby in Wales, is that there isn’t one – maybe we’d be better off leaving professional domestic rugby to France, Ireland and England where it still has financial and material justification.

Regional rugby in its current form simply isn’t working – attendances are plummeting to Sunday League Football levels, interest can best be described as occasional, and every single region is either financially up the creek or having to dramatically slash costs to keep out of the red.

So what’s the solution? Well there’s been a petition doing the rounds online demanding that the WRU dissolves the regions and reinstates a professional Welsh Premiership.The thinking behind it is perfectly understandable – the picture above this blog is a bit of PR gumph from the WRU depicting the current Welsh squad in the Premiership clubs that they (loosely) came from. It’s a tacit acceptance that rugby fans in Wales still identify more with the old Welsh clubs than they do with the nebulous regions and superclubs we’ve had since 2004. So surely a return to this would bring the crowds pouring back and secure the future of Welsh domestic rugby?

Of course, that’s absolute nonsense. The reason regional rugby was forced through in 2004, despite the obvious downsides, was because having a fully-professional league in Wales wasn’t financially viable – the clubs and the WRU itself were barely keeping their heads above water and the quality of coaching, conditioning and all that stuff was so uneven that the national team was a joke. 

So it’s a catch 22 – the increased professionalism brought in by regional rugby has given us eight years of fairly decent domestic and international rugby, complete with two Grand Slams, a fourth-placed World Cup finish and a European Challenge Cup winner, but nobody really gives a tinkers’ toss because only the hardcore rugby fans in Wales have made any effort to embrace the regional concept, and they aren’t numerous enough to fill 20,000-seater stadia across the country on a weekly basis. Even if the WRU and the regions work out a deal to bring in central contracts next season and stave off financial oblivion, that’s not going to solve the interest and attendance problem.

So maybe our only option is just to step back and let it die, bring an end to the regional concept and let the semi-professional Premiership become the top tier of the Welsh game – increased TV coverage would probably reinvigorate interest and the general standard of the old competition, while the best Welsh players could ply their trade in England, France or Ireland.

Meanwhile a select few younger players who have yet to earn a name for themselves and win an overseas contract could be centrally contracted to allow them the opportunity to develop their skills without distraction, until such a time as they’re either good enough to be picked up by a professional team, or move into the semi-pro ranks of the Premiership.

It could also have the knock-on effect of reawakening the enthusiasm for domestic rugby in the Welsh Valleys, so shamefully destroyed by the WRU when they pulled the plug on the Warriors in 2004. In truth, I think a large proportion of the current problems Welsh rugby faces can be traced back to the decision to effectively ostracise the true heartland of the game in Wales – the bitterness is still there, and will be for a very long time.

Heineken Cup rugby would obviously be a thing of the past, but given our track record there who would miss us – allowing the top four sides in the Premiership into the Challenge Cup would probably be fair.

Even typing out that idea makes me feel deeply, deeply sad at the prospect, and the detriment to the national side would surely be massive, but it’s the direction we’re headed, there’s no point ignoring it. 

In my heart of hearts I hope that the WRU’s financial review leads to an Irish-style central contract system that preserves Welsh talent in the regions and enables them to rebuild their supporter base, but it might just be wishful thinking.

Professional domestic rugby in Wales is on deathbed, the kindest thing for us to do might be to put it out of its misery.