Northern Dilemma

By PaulF
August 14 2005

WRU plans to regionalise all domestic rugby under the Premiership tier have been met with dismay and rightfully so. Any club with ambition are bound to be furious with any decrease in the standard of matches they can play.

Despite offering a rather timid peace offering in the shape of a play off route into the newly sponsored Principality Premiership, it does realistically signal a shut door to any hopes of a berth in the top flight. Even matches in the lower East & West divisions are considered a more attractive proposition, in an area where soccer / football very much reigns supreme.

Llangefni and Ruthin feel cheated, having won their way into division three of the national league's. Instead the WRU want to create a soulless Northern Scarlets amateur team to feed a Welsh Amateur XV. Which does partly make sense considering the development issues involved in sending teams down South, in relation to how much enjoyment can be gaged from traveling so far so often.

The need to create a proper development pyramid is very in my head, whilst we do not have provincialism, at least there are the foundations of a regional system developing.

Yet it does have the potential to disenfranchise Northerners if they do no feel part of the wider games in Wales, if there is nothing for them to aim for and a lower standard of league rugby to will the step to representative rugby prove to great to bridge?

My solution would be to create a proper semi professional North Wales entity playing at Premiership level, being fed by a Northern league, however this would disrupt the mechanics of club rugby in Wales. Ring fencing is already a big enough issue as it stands, with reductions just around the corner.

The main fundamental question this raises, is what exactly Wales wants to gain from it's domestic system, those of development in contrast to ambitious clubs who want to aspire to the top. Let us know what you think on the message board.