Mike Hall is a pretty unique figure in Welsh sport, having held such pivotal roles in both rugby and football.
With the oval ball, he captained Wales and was a Test Lion. You can read all about his eventful playing career here. On the football front, he was a board member of Cardiff City and co-owner of the company behind the construction of the club’s current stadium.
Now, after more than 20 years with that property development company, PMG, he is moving on and ready to embark on the next chapter of his life. When we catch up for a chat near his home in Pontcanna, it becomes clear his has been a career like few others.
The first part of that journey was focused firmly on rugby, as a threequarter for Bridgend, Cambridge University and Cardiff. He won 42 Wales caps between 1988 and 1995, captaining his country three times, and also went on the triumphant 1989 Lions tour of Australia. But then, as the millennium approached, so he found himself at a crossroads after hanging up his boots.
“When I finished playing rugby, it was a real weird feeling. A lot of the boys struggle with this, in terms of their mental health, trying to find things to do to keep themselves busy,” he explained.
“I remember the first September after I finished, in 1999, my kids were really young. They were four and two and I ended up in Cefn Mably Farm on the first Saturday of the season. There was this gap in my life suddenly. I was thinking ‘Am I going to be taking the kids to a farm every Saturday?’
“But the following week, Radio Wales rang me and that really took off. I ended up doing a lot of radio and television. I had some great fun with Eddie Butler and Jonathan (Davies) doing ScrumV. The BBC actually put me on a presenting course and offered me a job. I did all the training in the studio and they wanted me to sign a contract.
“I was doing some property stuff on the side, so I talked to Paul Guy, who had already set up PMG. I met him in the Griffin pub for a beer and told him about the job offer. He said rather than do that why don’t you come and join me and we’ll do it 50-50. I said ‘Well, let me have a think about it’. Six o’clock the next morning I knocked on his door and said ‘Let’s go for it’.”
That was the beginning of an adventure that was to see them involved in projects worth more £500m over the next two decades, most notably the building of the Cardiff City Stadium. Hall was also on the Bluebirds board for some three years, having joined along with other new investors. It was a real headline-hogging period which saw Sam Hammam replaced as chairman by Peter Ridsdale in 2006.
“We effectively forced Sam out. The club was about to go into administration. We were literally ten minutes away from that. To build the new stadium, you needed a concrete and reliable business plan, so you could prove to the council that the club was going to work going forward.
“The council were basically saying ‘We are not going to gift you this land and allow you to build this stadium and do all this development if we don’t think you have got a credible business plan’.
“When we were able to force Sam out, we needed a new figurehead. Peter Ridsdale had been brought in by Sam as an advisor. We liked him, he worked incredibly hard.
“It was a tight budget. We had £50m to build that stadium. You wouldn’t build it now for that. Sam wanted to build another Nou Camp! He wanted to spend £150m on a stadium. We had to bring the financial and design discipline to build something that would actually work.”
Amid challenging economic times, Hall admits there were some pretty hairy moments along the way.
“With the Cardiff City Stadium and the retail park, at one point we owed the Principality Building Society well over £70m in borrowing. That was me and Paul,” he reveals.
“It did get scary. There were some sleepless nights and some worrying meetings. The 2008-2009 period was really difficult for us when the recession came and the crash happened.
“But the Principality were unbelievably supportive. They trusted us to manage our way through it. I was extraordinarily lucky to have Paul alongside me. To my mind, he’s one of the best businessmen south Wales has ever produced. If I had been on my own, I would have probably s**t myself!
“There was an old landfill tip underneath the site, so it was challenging to develop, and there was a very limited budget. There were certainly some interesting times! But we were able to manage our way through it bit by bit. What we have ended up with is a massive benefit for the city, for the club and lately for the Wales football team.”
Hall does, however, have one abiding regret when it comes to the stadium and it comes from a rugby perspective.
“I did the deal to put the Blues in the stadium and they just gave up. That saddened me massively. They had a brand new stadium with all the facilities. They had a really good deal. The first game they played there, it was a sell out. All the hospitality facilities were being used, the bars were rocking. You were thinking, this is what it can be and then what did we allow to happen? We allowed the die-hards who sit in the bar in Cardiff Arms Park to drag them back to a dilapidated old stadium which is falling apart and you think what’s going on there? That really did sadden me when they rowed back on that.”
Given his business acumen, one wonders whether Hall ever wishes he had ever stayed in rugby and maybe moved into administration there?
“Certainly not at the Union, because I would never fit there. I would just be too outspoken. I know I couldn’t work in that structure. I would be unemployable I think!” he replies.
“There was one period after I finished playing where there was talk of me being director of rugby at Cardiff, with Terry Holmes coaching and Jonathan Davies coming on to the board. It would have been interesting and it might have worked, if we’d been given carte blanche to pick our own players and run it our own way, with the backing of Peter Thomas’ money.
“There is a little part of me that wishes perhaps I had done that, but then it’s a very fickle business. I probably wouldn’t change my career because it’s been a total break from rugby, something completely different. There’s also the fact I spent five years at University, three years at Cardiff doing an economics degree, two years in Cambridge. You get a professional qualification and you don’t want to throw all that away.”
So with both rugby and football having played a huge part in his life, which sport is he more engaged by now?
“I watch football more. My generation, very sadly, have been turned off by the rugby product here.
I still go to the internationals, although I am rethinking that after my experience last year. I spent the whole time with people getting up and down and going back and fore to the bar.
“I am no prude, I like a beer like anybody else. But I am thinking ‘For God’s sake, you are here to watch an international rugby match, can’t you just not have a drink for 80 minutes?’
“That’s what strikes me as being different when I go to watch the Wales football team. I went to the Austria and Ukraine games and they were some of the best sporting events I have been to in a very long time. They were extraordinary events, with the singing before and the passion.
“When the game was on, nobody was going to the toilet. They were all watching the football. Everybody was engaged and really watching every single moment. That struck me big time. It was fantastic. There was something there which was really hard to put your finger on. We used to have that in the stadium for rugby, but I think we have lost it.
“I think the Principality Stadium has become days out, it has become events. There is a hard core of people there that want to watch the rugby, of course there is, but it’s become almost a day out in Cardiff.”
So how often does he go to watch his former clubs Cardiff and Bridgend?
“Never. That’s really sad. I haven’t watched Cardiff play for years. Look, if they were playing Bath on a Saturday afternoon or Gloucester on a Friday night and it meant something, I would be the first there,” he said.
“But these games at the moment, I don’t even know the names of the South African teams. I am non-plussed by the whole thing. Why are Welsh teams playing in a league with South African sides? I just don’t get it and I don’t think the rugby public get it either.”
Giving his wider thoughts on the state of the Welsh game, he added: “When I see the likes of Gareth Davies being thrown out, it just bewilders me. There we had a real statesmen figurehead, not just in Welsh rugby but world rugby. He was well known on the international stage, he was trying to bring about progressive change to make us more professional and he’s been thrown out.
“If you look at some of the other people who have left as well, like Amanda Blanc and the non-exec directors. They have lived in the corporate world, they have been in private business, they know what it takes to succeed and they have taken one look at it and thought ‘That’s not for me’. That tells you everything you need to know.”
There has been much talk of late about the number of professional rugby teams that Wales can support and, for Hall, that brings back real echoes of one particularly significant episode during his playing career.
“When I was made Wales captain in 1995, it coincided with a time when the game was under extraordinary strain. There was a massive seismic change in rugby in that it was about to go professional,” he said.
“I was acting with Kerry Packer to try and sign all the players up, because as players at that time we were at breaking point. We were trying to work, we were trying to train, we were trying to be professional and we weren’t getting paid. It seems bizarre now when you think about it. With the amount of revenue the game was bringing in, you were thinking where was it all going?
“I think Packer wanted to do with rugby what he had done with cricket. I remember meeting his representatives when they flew into Cardiff Airport. They had this blueprint for how they wanted to take the game forward. Let’s not beat around the bush here, there was a lot of money involved.
“It was going to be a European league, home and away, with two Welsh teams - Cardiff and Swansea. I remember the lawyer showed me the blueprint for Wales and I went ‘That’s not going to work’ because you had Pontypridd, Llanelli, Bridgend, Neath, all these fantastic clubs excluded.
“I asked him how they were going to sell that and he said they’d looked at the GDP of Wales, the population and they believed this country could only support two fully professional rugby teams.
“They were going to set up franchises. I introduced them to Peter Thomas who was going to take a franchise. I think Vernon Pugh and the international board got wind of what was going on and that’s why they rushed through professionalism as quickly as they did. That’s why it was overnight, to keep control.
“I still think the Packer thing would have worked. Since then, we’ve had this slow painful death to get to the point now where we realise that we can only probably support two or three professional sides in Wales. I would rather have two top teams playing in the English league and one feeder side in the English Championship than the mess we have got at the moment. I think you would have 20-30,000 people going to watch those top sides.”
As for the game of rugby in general, he says: “I think sometimes you can miss the first half, come in after 60 minutes, after they have bashed s**t out of each other, and then there’s a few gaps open up. So it is becoming a little bit predictable on occasions.
“We were probably fatter and slower so perhaps that’s why there were more gaps! But it seems now like it is a little stereotypical. There’s patterns that they play. You watch it and think I may as well not be here for the first half sometimes. Perhaps I am looking back through rose-coloured spectacles, I don’t know.”
As for the two sports he has been involved in, well they have both gave him long-lasting friendships.
“I met some great people in football. I am still in touch with Malky Mackay to this day. He’s a top man. I have a lot of time and respect for him. I really enjoyed it when he was there at Cardiff.
“I feel so sad with what happened with him because for me he should be managing in the Premiership. I hope he can find a way back because he was a one-off, a really interesting character and a nice bloke. Dave Jones as well was a fantastic manager.
“The players were a bit different to what I was used to in rugby. They are nowhere near as loyal in football. There were some players who were fantastic at Cardiff City and others who really, really disappointed me. They can be just cut-throat.
“The loyalty thing in football is not there. In rugby, the group of players I played with in Cardiff from 1991 to 96, we have reunions, we play golf all the time, we go out for dinners all together, our wives are friends.”
As he now moves on from PMG and reflects on his time with the company, he does so with a lot of pride.
“It’s been fantastic and there’s a legacy there as well. It’s everywhere. We did some very significant projects in Wales. We have done more than £500m worth of transactions over the 20 years. We have done a lot together and I feel very fortunate to have been part of it all,” he says.
“I am very happy with how it has gone. I have been extraordinarily lucky. We had some tough times along the way, but a lot of fun doing it as well and we have been very successful.
“Paul is based in Abu Dhabi now and spends a lot of time in Spain, while I am still in south Wales. We are not going to do any property stuff together, so it’s sort of come to a natural conclusion and we’ve handed it on to Paul’s son, Rick.”
As for the future, there’s a fund-raising bike ride in Las Vegas in aid of Velindre next month, which he is going to be training hard for, and then what?
“I still want to do something. I am 56, I am not ready to retire. It’s on to the next chapter now, that’s the interesting thing.”
It has certainly been some life story already.
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