They may be double world champions, but the accommodation for Wales' Deaf rugby team in Argentina has been branded 'unacceptable' as the team were forced to pay out of their own pockets for a proper hostel at the World Cup.
The men's and women's team secured the World Deaf Rugby Sevens championship in Cordoba. The women beat England 32-0 on Sunday, while the men defended their title with a 20-5 victory against Australia.
The conditions at the athletes' village are currently at the centre of social media outrage. The WRU Deaf team page posted pictures on Twitter of what they says was the 'grim' bedding and pillows they were given.
The team's secretary Gareth Evans explained that the local government, the local rugby union and the national rugby union in Argentina had approved the accommodation. It was organised by the Argentinians alongside World Deaf Rugby.
The accommodation for players was paid for by the local government. However, for anyone outside the playing squad, or any nights stayed outside the competition window, would need to be covered by the team themselves.
Evans said: "We knew it wouldn't be The Ritz, we knew it would be bunks. They said look, 'It's in use, it's being used. We do things like this, it's fine'. When we got there, there were different blocks, different parts to this thing. Some teams were in refurbished areas, whereas us and two other teams were in a not nice one, which you can see is pretty grim.
"The players had a meeting themselves and decided they wanted to move and because of the time difference, the team manager phoned me in the night and got me out of bed and said look, 'Can you book this hostel because we think other teams are going to pull out'.
"I booked it for them while they were on their way there. They got in fine but it cost them about £85 a head for the five nights, plus the meals they would have had in the barracks they didn't get. It was probably more like £100 each it cost them.
"Other teams did the same and we complained about it. What we got back from World Deaf Rugby, they said 'Other teams are here, and it's okay'. The other teams said on the email trail, 'No, we just can't afford to do what the other teams have done. Don't mistake us for being happy.'
"We basically got threatened with disqualification if we didn't pay our player registration fees even though the tournament handbook said 'Fees are only payable by anyone staying in the free accommodation'.
"We withheld them until the second day of the competition, and we got threatened with disqualification so they weren't open for negotiation even though we were thinking, 'Look if we give you two-thirds, give us a third back and that covers some of the costs we incurred'. But they weren't having any of it.
"We had to pay $4,200 for the two teams, which is about £3,400, which we budgeted for. But that took away our ability to cover the accommodation we hadn't planned for. It's a lot of money. To be fair, the WRU are aware, I've had conversations. I've seen people on social media saying, 'Oh the WRU should do this and should do that', but there's no dispute between the two organisations."
Despite the fact that the deaf team are not directly funded by the WRU, Evans went on to clarify that the team have been offered a fee to help cover the costs.
You can contribute to the team's fundraiser by clicking here.
Gwynne Griffiths, the elected secretary of World Deaf Rugby, explained that using the barracks was the only option in order to keep the tournament on.
"The regional government of Cordoba suddenly announced that they could not pay for that accommodation, until May or June. However, as the teams had already paid in full to their airlines, it would have been a bigger loss to lose their flight costs than to lose the accommodation," he said.
Gwynne went on to explain that the teams wanted to stick to the originally agreed dates.
"In fairness to Argentina Deaf Rugby, they came up with the idea of using the army barracks as a point of accommodation which they had personally used before when training for the World Deaf Sevens. The difficulty was that the range of the accommodation in the barracks that were offered turned out to be an entirely different standard.
"It was unfortunate but it wasn't really an issue that had been expected. In fairness to Argentina Deaf Rugby, they really did their best to solve it. It wasn't ideal but really if they hadn't done that, there wouldn't have been a World Deaf Rugby Championships."
The former chair of Wales Deaf Rugby went on to say that if the teams didn't have the offer of the barracks, "Wales wouldn't be celebrating as World Deaf Sevens champions".
"In conjunction with the teams that went there, we are conducting a full review of the pre-tournament, the tournament itself and as we move on to the next tournament, we will have the benefit of being able to ensure that it doesn't happen again."
Gwynne went on to clarify that registration fees for players were nothing to do with the accommodation costs, but rather for medical cover, facilities and the final dinner for all the teams.
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