Ulster Rugby CEO Jonny Petrie reviews his first year in charge and looks ahead to our key priorities and opportunities for the rest of the season and beyond.
On his first year with Ulster Rugby…
It’s been a whirlwind. If you said to me a year and a half ago that I’d be living in Belfast and running Ulster Rugby, I wouldn’t have seen that coming, but I’m really pleased to be here.
There’s been a lot of foundation work that we have needed to do. A lot of that is aimed at setting us up for the long-term. There has been - from an organisational perspective - a lot of restructuring and reviewing of our business priorities to set us up for the way forward and for a period of growth. It has been important in those first six months to get the right people into the right roles, making sure we’re set up appropriately and that we lay out a clear, pragmatic path forward on a number of fronts.
On the key priorities for the rest of the season…
The context for us over the past few years - and this is common within professional sport - is that costs had risen and revenues had dropped. That’s not a sustainable business model for anyone, so we have needed to turn that around, and we’re consistently working hard to address that; at the same time investing in the right areas of the game and the business.
There’s a huge amount of work being done around the matchday experience and how we communicate and engage with our audiences to bring people back to watch Ulster Rugby. It’s heartening to see that moving along but there is a lot more we’re committed to doing.
There is a big emphasis for us to be consumer-focused in how we operate with our supporters and understand what they want, and we make sure to provide that in ways we’re already investing in. We have brand-new big screens up and are replacing the floodlights. We have also changed the operation in the bars and upgraded our ability to take contactless payments. All these small things that go together to make a matchday experience better, we now need to push that forward.
To go four from four in the Heineken Champions Cup has been fantastic and having a strong start to the Guinness PRO14 as well has been really encouraging. There are young players coming through, getting league and European experience, and that offers a lot of hope for the future of the game.
The senior performers are now starting to deliver the goods week-in, week-out, and the performance levels of the likes of Marcell Coetzee, John Cooney, Stuart McCloskey, Luke Marshall among numerous others show we have the right environment and are moving in the right direction.
All we can do is keep getting better every day and who knows where the ceiling is for this province? It’s very exciting.
I feel that one of the key things is that people want to see someone who is a focal point standing at the front of the organisation - representing rugby in Ulster at all levels, who cares about it, knows what they’re doing and takes that responsibility accordingly. I would like to think that people see that I’m here for the good of the club, and of the game in Ulster, and that I see a confident way forward for us.
On the key priorities for the rest of the season…
The context for us over the past few years - and this is common within professional sport - is that costs had risen and revenues had dropped. That’s not a sustainable business model for anyone, so we have needed to turn that around, and we’re consistently working hard to address that; at the same time investing in the right areas of the game and the business.
There’s a huge amount of work being done around the matchday experience and how we communicate and engage with our audiences to bring people back to watch Ulster Rugby. It’s heartening to see that moving along but there is a lot more we’re committed to doing.
There is a big emphasis for us to be consumer-focused in how we operate with our supporters and understand what they want, and we make sure to provide that in ways we’re already investing in. We have brand-new big screens up and are replacing the floodlights. We have also changed the operation in the bars and upgraded our ability to take contactless payments. All these small things that go together to make a matchday experience better, we now need to push that forward.
There is also the performance of the team on the field within the professional game - we have a way to go in the development stages of the game, to make sure we have as many Ulster born and bred players in the senior team in the long-term too.At participation and grassroots level, there are significant challenges and we have to work to retain our existing playing numbers at the junior end of the game. We need to be innovative and place a priority on more accessibility to the game, which gives people the opportunity to play in a way that suits their lifestyle. While we clearly want to see new talent coming through the pathway, I’d love to see more people, adults and kids, just playing the game at a social level. On the Ulster team performance… The Ulster team performance has been hugely positive. Dan and I work closely together and it’s important that he has that support alongside him. The best thing I can do is make sure we have the right coaching group – and we absolutely do – but it’s also about making sure you do everything you can to create a professional environment to best operate in – the coaches and players need the right tools to do the job, so to speak. When I joined halfway through the season last year, we were delivering beyond expectations. Off the back of a few difficult years and Dan being new to the Province, no-one really expected us to deliver much, but we performed above and beyond that. It set the benchmark higher for the following year and it has been hugely promising to see the squad really kick on again this year.
To go four from four in the Heineken Champions Cup has been fantastic and having a strong start to the Guinness PRO14 as well has been really encouraging. There are young players coming through, getting league and European experience, and that offers a lot of hope for the future of the game.
The senior performers are now starting to deliver the goods week-in, week-out, and the performance levels of the likes of Marcell Coetzee, John Cooney, Stuart McCloskey, Luke Marshall among numerous others show we have the right environment and are moving in the right direction.
All we can do is keep getting better every day and who knows where the ceiling is for this province? It’s very exciting.