It's Grim In The Rhondda - But Looking-Up In Alloway

A YEAR or two back, I chanced upon a picture, on Facebook, which summed-up to me the main problem with Welsh Rugby. It was an end-of-season picture of a rather successful Cardiff RFC squad – two or three trophies laid-out in front, everyone looking smart, down to polished boots; what struck me, however, was the picture contained 15 players and 16 blazer-clad committee-men.

Down in Wales, having the blazer and access to the committee room always seems to have counted for more than wearing the strip and shedding blood for the team.

At the moment, for all the problems we are having up here, I believe Scottish Rugby is in a better place than Welsh Rugby. We bit the bullet, no matter how reluctantly, and dropped to two full-time professional teams, because we barely had enough talent to staff them. Today, I reckon Wales are in that same place, indeed, If Wales dropped to three regions, and Scotland went up to that same number, in the United Rugby Championship, nobody would notice the difference.

This morning I cam across a piece, written by Christopher Thomas, which neatly sums-up the state of play in the valleys. Thomas is Welsh rugby royalty; his father RCC 'Clem' Thomas was a flanker, a Cambridge Blue, a Barbarian and a British and Irish Lion, who won 26 Welsh caps out of Swansea, captained his country and famously cross-kicked to set up the winning try for Ken Jones, the last time Wales beat the All Blacks, at Cardiff in 1953. He then became Rugby Correspondent of The Observer and today, his sons, including Christopher, still write on and are involved in the game.

Christopher's expose of the many errors committed by the Welsh 'blazerati' – since rugby first embraced professionalism will be a hard read for past and current high heid yins in Welsh rugby. It also has a message for we Scots. Our 'blazers” have also had their dodgy moments.

Mind you, I will take issue with Christopher on the matter of timing. He dates the rot as setting-in in the 1980s, when “shamateurism” became common place. I recall the late Gordon Brown telling me about travelling down to Wales for Barry John's farewell game (Broon Frae Troon got Man of the Match). He met-up with a fellow 1971 Lion, who had left London Welsh to return to Wales, to play for Swansea.

Rugby was amateur back then, so when Broon asked his fellow Lion what his job now was, he replied: “I play rugby for Swansea.”

“OK, but, what's the day job?”

“I play rugby for Swansea.” Apparently, he had been provided with a job by one of Swansea's main sponsors, the only thing his contract required him to do was train twice a week and play for Swansea on Saturday. This was in the 1970s.

The other drawback with Welsh Rugby for me, is their wish to be English. The big Welsh clubs: Cardiff, Llanelli, Newport, Swansea, they would kill to be admitted to the English Leagues. They could sell regular cross-border fixtures with the likes of Bath, Bristol, Harlequins, Leicester and Saracens.

If we take Cardiff, Dragons, Ospreys and Scarlets as continuations of the four clubs named in the last paragraph, and if they were to be invited into an extended English Premiership – the quartet wouldn't even look back at the URC as they fled. However, I don't see the English coming to their rescue any time soon.

But, I digress. Christopher Thomas suggests a management model not that far from what we are looking at up here. He suggests the four Regions be re-named as Cardiff, Llanelli, Newport and Swansea and they be under-pinned by eight semi-professional teams.

These eight semi-pro teams will be responsible for player development and academies, and would be required to run a first team and an Under-20 one. To me, that's the model we should be looking for for our URC teams and Super6/Super8.

The other clubs could then be left to organise themselves as to how they play strictly-amateur, grass-roots rugby. You know, it could work.

I FIGURATIVELY had to tie wee Pete Horne to a chair earlier this week, as I interviewd him for the Ayr RFC newsletter on how his Ayrshire Bulls side is preparing for the FOSROC Super6 Sprint Series.

Bulls, the reigning Champions, kick the new campaign off by entertaining Boroughmuir under the Millbrae lights on Friday night, and it cannot come soon enough for the new Head Coach.

“We've had a squad of 20 players training since January, we had good hit outs against Jersey Reds and Watsonians on the last two week-ends and the boys (and the coaching team) are champing at the bit to get going for real,” he said.

“I think we are in a good place. We've had one or two injuries but, I like the look of our squad and we are raring to go,” Pete added.

The eligibility rules have changed for this third season of S6. Perhaps because of criticism of the recruiting of teams such as Bulls, the SRU had put a cap on the number of non-Scots (NSQ players) this season. Bulls have six such players, but, only four can be in a match-day squad. It's a rule which Horne can live with.

Bulls lost a few players to the professional game at the end of the last campaign, while others have gone off to play elsewhere – the likes of loose-head prop George Thornton is currently in Australia, while Gavin Lowe and Matt Davidson are with the Scotland Sevens squad.

Horne spent the winter watching a lot of Premiership Rugby and he has recruited widely from that league. “I've picked-up one or two young players who missed out on representative honours and feel they have something to prove,” he said.

He is also delighted to see, now the Covid restrictions are easing, a professional draft back in play, which means several of the Glasgow Warriors' fringe players available for the Bulls.

In a final link-up with Scotstoun, Pete has persuaded younger brother, George to  join Jamie Bhatti, Rob Harley and Pat McArthur in the Bulls technical area.