Protecting the past, embracing the future

While we haven’t generated trust policy yet, we have come up with a strapline. It would perhaps be useful if we explained a little more about why we’ve chosen this.

To cut a long debate short, we really struggle to see why we need to have camps of ‘Cardiff’ and ‘Blues’ supporters when we’re all following the same side. To caricature the situation, supporters who have joined our rugby journey since 2003 can’t see what all the fuss is about; those whose came on board before this date are often indignant that so much sporting history has seemingly been consigned to the bin. 

Our view is that, with attendance figures as they are, we can’t afford to lose either group. Unification, rather than division of our supporter base, is the way to go. At the end of the day, we have far more in common than that which separates us-and what we all want to see is Cardiff Blues reassert its place in British, European and World rugby.

We see the reforms that were conducted in 2003 as being somewhat artificial (given that Cardiff pursued a ‘stand alone’ status). We struggle to understand why we’re trying to build a branding around the fairly ubiquitous term ‘Blues’ (and even more dilute concepts) when we have one of the greatest provenances of any club side in the world (and our USP is actually the ‘Cardiff’ bit!). We also think that our ‘haters’ will continue to hate whatever we’re called, and that de-emphasising the Cardiff bit won’t result in new hordes of supporters suddenly coming on board (but conversely, that it will result in us losing many of those that we have). Only success on the pitch will influence bums on seats.

We prefer to see the Cardiff-Blues issue as one of evolution, a process that commenced in 1876 rather than 2003. Just as we want to protect the club’s unique past from further erosion, we’re equally keen to embrace the regional/developmental role that it now plays in Welsh rugby-and see no reason at all why these things should be somehow seen as incompatible. So, we’re delighted that our CEO made it clear that the ‘Cardiff’ part of the name would never be dropped (http://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-news/richard-holland-qa-cardiff-blues-9083590) , and fully supportive of the broader regional role that we now play (though some may argue that we’ve always played that developmental role). 

Protecting the past, embracing the future-you know it makes sense!