This week’s guest to the Sportin Wales podcast was the WRU’s Head of Player Development John Alder.

Tasked with one of the most difficult roles in Welsh rugby, ensuring a steady stream of successful rugby players progress through the ranks and into the national sides.

Alder was appointed in April 2022 and since then has begun to impart his vision of what Welsh rugby should look like.

He has been instrumental in the development of the Schools and Colleges League, along with the Player Development Centre’s in women’s rugby and most recently the new format and rebrand of the Indigo Premiership to Super Rygbi Cymru.

Alongside some strong questioning from Sportin Wales co-founder Alex Cuthbert, this week saw Alder asked about everything from Super Rygbi Cymru, BUCS rugby, Wales Under 20’s, oh and the case of Immanuel Feyi-Waboso.

“I joined in April 2022, and it’s been a bit of whirlwind,” said Alder.

“It’s not been as smooth as I might have thought, I always thought it would be a big challenge and a privilege to step into the sport in Wales. It’s the national sport and I was excited by the challenge.

“I didn’t quite foresee the bumps we’ve had to chart the last few years but I’m still excited about the change we can drive forward.

“It takes great responsibility because it’s so important to everybody and it’s not something I’m taking lightly.”

Alder played schoolboy international rugby and enjoyed a short spell at Gloucester and in Australia and the Exeter Chiefs.

Since his playing days he was involved in education, the NRL in rugby league before joining the English Institute of Sport as head of performance pathways alongside Nigel Walker.

The pathway has been under intense scrutiny in recent times with Wales’ men’s international side struggling after a golden generation of players with the likes of Dan Biggar, Alun Wyn Jones, Justin Tipuric and Leigh Halfpenny all retiring internationally in the last 12 months or so.

“The challenge from a pathway perspective with the academies and programmes that are run is, how do you hold a space where each of the players can develop at the rate they need to,” said Alder.

“Also, how can the programmes best prepare the players for what they’re going to face in the end, like some of our younger players who’ve perhaps been called up earlier than they might have expected like Cam Winnett, Mackenzie Martin, how can we ensure that the programmes they’ve been in till that point have prepared them t be called upon at any moment?

“It’s a little bit tricky as how do you plan for that?

“Also, it’s important not to write players off too soon as there’ll be boys who are a shouting talent from 14 or 15 but others may be a later bloomer, so we need to take care of those players on their different journeys.”

In April 2022, the signs were already there that it was a big job and Alder began with what he sees as the “cornerstone of the system” and the regional academies before “working outwards”.

Alder says he feels the pathway are getting to a stage where the Wales under 18s and under 20s have “stabilised quite nicely.”

“We’ve got two good leaders in there with Richard Wiffin in the U20s and Richie Pugh in the U18s,” said Alder.

“Now we can do some work.”

Previously Wales sevens has been a key element of the pathway to international rugby, with the likes of Cuthbert, Tipuric, Lee Byrne and James Hook, all having come through the system.

Currently the Welsh sevens don’t compete on the sevens series individually as they are part of team GB.

“I’m a big fan of sevens,” said Alder.

“I haven’t been close to sevens since I started because they joined team GB and that changed things fundamentally in terms of what we do domestically and access to players.

“Until we know what the future of what GB sevens looks like it’s quite hard to build that domestically in terms of what we’d build in terms of a pathway for lifetime sevens players or as a development route, which I know New Zealand have been quite celebrated in how they’ve used sevens for development.

“For the moment it’s at a bit of a holding pattern, get out the back of the Paris Olympics.

“It’s been a disappointing cycle for GB men’s, you’d think with the power of three great rugby nations it should be a guaranteed but that hasn’t proven to be true.”

Of course, any proposed return to Welsh sevens would be dependent on finances and as the WRU shorten budgets the question arises, does Alder feel he has enough funds to allow his vision of Welsh rugby to properly succeed.

“I suppose it’s the saying, scarcity is the mother of invention,” said Alder.

“How can we look really clinically at what we’re doing and be more efficient and effective as more money doesn’t necessarily mean better results and how can we make sure we’re squeezing every drop of the lemon.

“Of course I’d like more money, but I think we can make some significant strides and hopefully if over time that is increased, we can take it from there.”

So where are we in the timeline of Alder’s programme for changes?

“I always saw it as a three-stage change process,” said Alder.

“The complex political change, some of the pain we’ve been through quite publicly regarding semi-professional change and school changes.

“Then it’s embedding the programmes before sharpening the knife on it.

“I’d probably say we’re on stage two, beginning to embed the programmes, we’ve gone through the big structural change, now let’s good at what we’re doing.

“The decisions will probably not bear fruit until 4, 5 years or even longer. We’ve positioned it as 10 years to mastery in the men’s game, Warren Gatland said to me he doesn’t expect second rows to be any good until they’re 27, 28 so we shouldn’t be writing players off at 22.”

So if the systems are in place, do we have enough talent coming through, for Alder it’s a resounding answer.

“Yes, we do,” said Alder.

“We need to fall back in love with the national game. We’ve got remarkable conversion rates for such a small population, other sports would give their left arm for our conversion rates based on the number of registered players.

“Yes we’ve got the talent, we’ve got a small playing population compared to some of the other tier one countries but it’s never stopped us before.”

And then that perennial question, how many regions should we have for those players to succeed in?

“In my view, and I can only look through a development principal point of view, having four thriving regions is going to give us a brilliant cohort to pick a national team from,” said Alder.

“It works in my mind having four, but we want to have them humming.”

John Alder was speaking on this week’s episode of the Sportin Wales podcast which is available on all audio podcast streaming platforms or on youtube as well as the Sportin Wales website.