Bridgend & Neath to Merge

By Paul (03/12/02)
December 3 2002

According to a meeting earlier today between the Premiership club's, Neath and Bridgend have unveiled plan's to merge as a "provincial club". But this has already provoked a new war of words between the clubs as well as the union.

The plan would see both club's combining with each other for the Celtic League and European competitions, but both clubs would retain they're club identity in the planned semi-professional premiership.

But it does not appear to have gone down well with the other club's, especially Llanelli's chief executive Stuart Gallacher.

“How can a club owned by the Union possibly dictate the future of Welsh rugby under a provincial structure and, furthermore, unilaterally declare its own province to boot. This makes a total mockery not only of David Moffett’s appointment, but also of the Union’s role in attempting to pave the way for the future of Welsh rugby.”

“Neath RFC is a wholly owned subsidiary of the WRU, its officers are WRU officers and therefore somebody at the WRU must have approved this move.

“We are now seeing, very publicly, the way Welsh rugby operates at its worst. This is a loose cannon approach at a time when the game needs, more than ever, a considered and well thought through, consensus based approach to the future of rugby in Wales.”

“This whole issue must be referred immediately to WRU group chief executive David Moffett before matters get even further out of hand.”

But according to reports both clubs approached the union sometime last week. Which suggests that the union seems quite content to allow such a merger. Even more to the back this up, is that Neath are of course owned by the union as Gallacher stated. Leighton Samuels decision to pull Bridgend out of the "Gang of 5" appears to have had been a deliberate ploy to get Neath on their side.

The threat of being swallowed up by the bigger neighbours in a so-called merger, by in Neath's case Swansea and in Bridgend's case Pontypridd.

Geographically Neath and Swansea are close together, but are also in the same WRU district, in Mid Glamorgan.

This could be the the first merger of many, a Swansea / Llanelli province looks certain as well as a Gwent province in Newport and Ebbw Vale.

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Two Kiwi referee's will take charge of two of Wales's six Nation's matches

The full list is as follows;

Six Nations 2003 referee appointments:
February 15 - Italy v Wales (Joel Jutge, France), England v France (Paul Honiss, New Zealand).
February 16 -Scotland v Ireland (Andrew Cole, Australia).
February 22 - Italy v Ireland (Tony Spreadbury, England), Wales v England (Steve Walsh, New Zealand).
February 23 - France v Scotland (Peter Marshall, Australia).
March 8 - Ireland v France (Andre Watson, South Africa), Scotland v Wales (Pablo Deluca, Argentina).
March 9 - England v Italy (Alain Rolland, Ireland).
March 22 - Wales v Ireland (Steve Lander, England), England v Scotland (Alan Lewis, Ireland).
March 23 - Italy v France (Nigel Williams, Wales).
March 29 - France v Wales (Paddy O'Brien, New Zealand), Scotland v Italy (David McHugh, Ireland)
March 30 - Ireland v England (Jonathan Kaplan, South Africa)