Dear Scarlets Supporter
Can I first speak on behalf of everyone at the Scarlets by saying how happy we were to welcome you back to the Parc on Friday night after an 18-month absence.
It was wonderful to hear Sosban Fach and your long-overdue cheers around the stadium and brilliant that the boys could reward you with a fantastic bonus-point win.
We were privileged to welcome close to 2,500 NHS workers and their families to the game, a small gesture from us to say thank you for everything they have done for our community during the Covid-19 pandemic. It wasn’t long ago that Parc y Scarlets was an emergency field hospital.
The impact of Covid has been significant for the Scarlets and resulted in our business being mothballed during this period. We have had to reduce our staff headcount in order to survive the pandemic and recruiting new team members continues to be a real challenge with such a tight labour market. We still have a number of positions we are actively recruiting for.
Despite extensive planning and preparations to be ready to welcome back fans we have been impacted by supplier delivery issues and it directly affected us ahead of last week’s first home URC game against the Emirates Lions. As an example, our season ticket stock delivery was only received a week before the match which put immense pressure on the ticket office team to print and package up your season tickets to be received ahead of last Friday. We are hugely grateful to members of our Supporters Group for volunteering and giving up their time to support us with this task.
We are continuing to work incredibly hard to bring our stadium and background operations back up to speed after an 18-month hiatus. We are aware that elements of the matchday experience were not at the standards we expect. We do rely heavily on a casual matchday workforce; these are all newly-recruited and for many it is their first experience in a working environment.
As always, we are committed to providing our loyal supporters with the very best matchday experience possible and we will always look to improve as we cautiously rebuild our operations. We are always grateful for your feedback and will work to continue to improve our processes.
Thank you for your continued patience, and most importantly for your continued support.
We look forward to seeing you on Sunday for another big match against Munster.
Thank you all
Phil Morgan (Chief Operating Officer)