What is the point?

What's the point of the Principality Premiership? Is it only to give S4C games to show during the Heineken Cup? Is it to give Pontypridd RFC somebody to play against?

News through that the Scarlets are looking at Stephen Shingler as injury cover for Rhys Priestland. This hot on the heels of the Ospreys signing a Kiwi prop from the second tier of NZ rugby as injury cover. This is a clear signal from the Regions, the Premiership has failed.

Let's look at the theory. The Premiership is a semi professional tier to develop talent for the Regions. Marginal Regional players can go there to play competitive rugby whilst they try to break into the Regional teams. Top flight players can go there to ease back into rugby after injury. The regions can call up players from the Premiership to supplement their squads as they need to. The Regions are closely linked to the Principality clubs.

The reality? The Regions operate completely separate squads from the Premiership clubs. They have academies where big youngsters are fast tracked to professional rugby from early teens. The Academy players are the only ones who get called up from the Premiership, if they are allowed to play at that level at all. The Regions know who is Regional standard and have them signed up, so in an injury crisis naturally turn their gaze elsewhere rather than calling up players who have not been to an academy and therefore are not prepared for Regional rugby. The talent just isn't there and the Principality players are just not fit enough or properly prepared for Regional rugby. Or so Regional coaches would have you believe.

They 'work closely' with the Principality coaches who 'spot talent' for them.

Of course, a Principality coach wanting to make a name for himself is naturally going to be keen to tell the Region to come and poach his best player...

And the Regional coach is going to be only too happy to have been proven wrong as to the ability of the player he missed...

So why bother?

I have been a keen supporter of the idea of the Premiership. However I have only attended a handful of Premiership matches. Attendance generally is poor, even by Welsh rugby standards.

The 'two way street' between Premiership and regional rugby doesn't really exist. Even with the Scarlets, who have been forced into it cooperation with their Principality clubs financially, the examples of players stepping up are very limited.

The Principality Premiership is of course a sop to those clubs who were up in arms over the establishment of the Regions in the first place. I would love to see strong club rugby in Wales, but with the financial state of the game, are so many semi professional clubs actually sustainable if they can't develop players to Regional standard?

Welsh rugby players can be paid to play at an extraordinarily low level of Rugby. The first thing to do is to ban payments to any player in any league under the Principality Premiership unless he is registered to a Premiership club. And enforce it...

The next thing to do is to play all Premiership games on a Wednesday night. The WRU through the new PRGB should haul up any Region who has players on their books who are not injured, but don't play at least three games a month in the season either for the Region or a Premiership club.

RGC1404 should be fast tracked in and given a relegation amnesty of three seasons.

The WRU should then seriously consider whether a squad limit should be placed on the Regions or whether the Regions should withdraw from the Pro12; only competing in European competition as representative sides as opposed to the 'super' club sides they are now.

Something this radical is needed or the Premiership will become (if it hasn't already) just another league. Regions will need to set up 'A' teams to play against each other to test Academy graduates, just as they do in Ireland.

Personally that would depress me as I think the history of Welsh club rugby is not something to be discarded lightly, but the Principality (and the Regions) must be made to work or they must face radical reform.

Ive been saying it for seasons, the prem has been left to rot, and is basically a warming station for the academy boys who can't make pro rugby early on.

The 2 romanian props brought in by the blues could be used as another example, 1 a teen but the other 28 isn't he???

Playing prem games during the week is a nice idea, stop competing with pro rugby and offer fans the chance to follow both. Right now you get free prem tickets with your regional season ticket, but you are unable to support both because they always seem to play at similar times.

The prem needs a full restructure, given a far more important role in welsh rugby and the whole of wales based around it, even the regions!!!

If the regions left the Rabo we could quite feesibly see 90% of the pro squads play prem rugby during Int breaks!!!

Each region has at least 2 players in each position who do not go on int duty, if those players were split between 3 prem clubs each when the int breaks come around then we would see near 2 months of proffesional prem rugby in Feb/March each year, then again in November. Of course this wouldn't be ideal but if the int season changed then we could see a fully prof prem and Regional HC competition in place.

Is that a first Bluesman? Have we actually agreed on something?

Maybe

It's taken this long but your finally correct on something

I think playing on Wednesdays is the right idea, I also agree with the fact that the regions are underutilising their "feeder clubs" and players are effectively stagnating by playing 13 mins every three weeks. I can't understand what these players must think of their carriers. “Wow, I’m being paid £xx,xxx a year to play 300 mins of rugby a season." The cooperation between region and club is dismal. The Blues are awful at it, and basically exclusively use players from Cardiff RFC and have in the past taken players from Ponty only to place them in Cardiff RFC next season. The bridge between playing Prem and Rabo needs to be bridged, if an A league is what it takes, then so be it. This is something the PRGB need to address as the regions seem to be perfectly happy with the status quo.

As for RGC1404, I think they're growing at an organic rate and they're the best thing the WRU have done since founding. So let’s leave them be and let them evolve naturally in to a club/region of premiership standard. Rather than forcing them up.

That's an intelligent post and not a cue for viagra jokes...