The Future, where to now?

Rugbydreamer has started a thread about Scarlets season tickets which has evolved into a discussion about the future of Welsh rugby.
In that thread Glas a du has made some very (to me) telling points. He basically says (sorry if I misquote you here Glas) that we either abandon the regional concept or embrace it. In doing the latter he then explains that by going to a three tier system, Premiership, B&I cup teams and the regional/superclubs we would have a better overall pathway for emerging players.
Hope I got that right

The situation that we have right now is hardly attracting huge numbers of fans, all four regions are based south of the M4 disenfranchising large numbers of rugby fans across almost the whole of the rest of Wales, while at the same time drawing in players who's natural bias is to teams that will never get represented by any region.
Rob McCusker, Cai Griffiths, George North, perhaps extreme examples, all come from "oop North" while I'm not doubting for one minute their passion for the teams they play for, wouldn't it be better for them to have played for an RGC 1404? The WRU trumpeted this expansion of North Wales rugby but latterly seem to have allowed it to stagnate, should it now be given the kiss of life, would an enhanced RGC brought into the Premier now when it's about to be changed and rebranded, be the way to go?
How would such a move fit in with the silly changes already planned ?
I'm on record on another site some many months ago, calling for the "regions" to not be allowed to have premier representation, something that other posters have disagreed with, but I feel very strongly that rugby is lost in Wales if the "community" is abandoned, I sit in the Liberty with some big city types around me and at times they have a completely different take on the game to me. With the way our regions are currently setup, big city rugby could so easily be a turn off to so many fans north of the M4.

So with this in mind which way do you think that Welsh rugby should go for a BETTER FUTURE?

sick of us trying to reinvent the wheel, we have what we have four professional regions which lik eit or not have improved competition for places and raised the standard of our player pool, ie we compete with every team we play at a national level now as opposed to the 40-50-60 point drubblings we used to regualrly receive from the SH sides,

the wru are trying to tidy up the prem i prefer 8 clubs rather than ten but it is another step in right direction,

i love the way weve come off the back of a dissapointing season at regional level and everyone in wales is up in arms and all doom and gloom again

nothing needs to change, the players at the regions jus need to go back work harder and harder over this summer and come back ready to deliver next year, end of

Gavin, I don't know how old you are, but I remember an eight team premiership. It was the farce we had before turning to regionalisation. 8 teams are not enough. On paper you can say it allows you to concentrate better players in less teams, pay them better for the same outlay. In practice it does not work. There is a critical mass of teams that are required in a league to keep it viable and this is 12. This gives 22 matches in a season with a further potential for 6 in the Welsh cup. You try running a club on less than 16 home matches in an 8 month season. You can get away with 10 if you have two cup competitions.

However we never had regionalisation. We hear of Ospreylia, but where are tge boundaries? I don't know, but every Irishman can tell you the counties that make up his province, and will have a good crack at the others.

My point on the other thread is what we have now is a halfway house, superclubs masquerading as regions. We must either have superclubs, with premiership players being able to play for the superclub of their choice irrespective of the location of their premiership club. Or we must have a true regional structure. This can be achieved through representative sides playing in the B&I Cup. In Ireland their regions A sides play that competition. I don't want to copy that as I think that the Regions would foul it up for us.

Could someone please post a dummys guide to how the clubs currently work.

Can you make it easy for someone like myself to understand - I love my rugby but only recently have started watching Club rugby. I am really hoping to get into it next season, so I would love to know how it works.

keep it simple!

Glas a du wrote:........................
My point on the other thread is what we have now is a halfway house, superclubs masquerading as regions. .......................

Superclub or region? Its just a matter of nomenclature and irrelevant. I do agree with the need to seperate the clubs from the regions though. Allow market forces to determine who can bid for the best players in the clubs. Support the clubs (8 of them in the Premiership with relegation and promotion, with a cup competition and an Anglo-Welsh cup) financially from central funds, put the onus of player development squarely on their shoulders.

Centrally contract those in the national Squad, let the Regions play the Magners and the HC, have either a Celtic cup involving all the ML teams or no cup competition at all (The LV is an irrelevance and a waste of space).

A third tier of Professional Rugby just isnt needed - we dont have enough quality players for TWO tiers as it is and adding a third tier is just going to increase the number of NWQ journeymen in the top level.

I seem to remember the Dragons made a brave decision to play a select Gwent team as a pre-season friendly and they lost, they never repeated the exercise, this tells me the standard of the regional side is not that much greater the the best of the premiership. When you consider the Scarlets this season they have not done badly fielding premier players. It is true we did get some hammerings in the past but we in Wales seem to have a lot of physical players in the game that we did not have in the past allowing us to compete. For me regional rugby is a sham we have four select clubs and wasting talent in other areas.

North Wales will not be added. The largest town in mid and North Wales is Wrexham, it is approximalely the size of Bridgend. Secondly within that town they already have a professional football team and a rugby league team competing for fans.
Thirdly there was resistance to the Italian teams joining the Magners due to extra games and player burn out. Dont forget Welsh players already compete in the anglo / welsh cup, wheres as Irish, Scottish and Italian teams have those weeks off for the most part.
RGC404 was a decent idea in itself but soon went off course to a shambles. We started with an idea to promote the game in wrexham. They ended up in colwyn bay, to join the magners then t play game against reserve teams from any club side, then filled those spots with Canadian players being paid for by Welsh funds, which the club couldnt generate, so went bankrupt...
Basically you either do it whole heartedly and push it hard, or you dont bother.
The regions arent failing, the basic major issue at Cardiff is Dai Young is a terrible judge of talent in regards to backs (he used to be a prop). He lost Nicky young and bought in an australian full back to fill the gap (Norton-Knight), it failed terribly when the player was of very poor quality. He then brought in the most uncreative fly half in British rugby in Parks. 10 is the most important player on the pitch and Young couldnt get a good one if his job depended on it.
As for the Ospreys well for all their assumed failings, they have only been poor since the end of the 6 nations. A lot of their players announced they were leaving together which must of put moral down the toilet amongst the squad. For all the complaints this season, if you take the entire season, you can also argue they stuffed the scarlets by 60 points to!
As for Wales.. well... we were disappointed with performances, but in results terms (the bottom line) we beat scotland and italy away and beat Ireland at home! The truth is if we had beaten England too, wed of had a triple crown and Welsh fans would be bouncingg off walls going into this world cup!
While we arent playing the kamikazie, attacking, creative rugby the welsh fans love, we are playing the percentage based kicking game, with solid commited defence, with few suicidal mistakes, which will give us the chance of beating the island teams in the world cup pools. Which is basically what we hope for in a best case scenario.
The Dragons and Scarlets have been a joke for several years yet they string 6 weeks of good rugby and welsh fans discount the fact the the Ospreys have at times supplied 13 members of the Welsh national 15!
We talk ourselves down and are now in a frame of mind that Ireland are so superiour to us at the moment, yet we BEAT them this year in the international, and have in fact have won the same amount of grandslams in 6 years as they have managed in the last 111 years!