{"id":110094,"date":"2025-09-01T04:26:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T04:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/110094\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T04:26:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T04:26:19","slug":"welsh-rugby-cuts-which-regions-are-at-risk-as-consultation-on-wru-plan-starts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/110094\/","title":{"rendered":"Welsh rugby cuts: Which regions are at risk as consultation on WRU plan starts?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The most successful Welsh side since regional rugby was launched in 2003 with four league titles and an Anglo-Welsh Cup triumph.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Warren Gatland famously named 13 Ospreys in his first Wales team in 2008.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But that star-studded squad of &#8216;Galacticos&#8217;, with the likes of Shane Williams, Gavin Henson and Ryan Jones as well as All Blacks Justin Marshall, Marty Holah and Jerry Collins, should have achieved more.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The region has produced genuine superstars, such as Alun Wyn Jones, Shane Williams, Dan Biggar, Adam Jones and James Hook. This summer it provided one of only two British &amp; Irish Lions players from Wales &#8211; Jac Morgan flying to Australia along with Gloucester&#8217;s Tomos Williams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ospreys also have population on their side in Wales&#8217; second-biggest city and have opted to leave the often soulless Swansea.com Stadium and spend this 2025-26 season in Bridgend while they redevelop St Helen&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Swansea council have safeguards if professional rugby in the city is impacted by the WRU decision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The region, taken over by Y11 Sport &amp; Media in 2020, came close to a merger with the Scarlets in 2019, while talk of a merger with Cardiff in 2023 was denied.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The WRU would be keen for those discussions to begin again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The most successful Welsh side since regional rugby was launched in 2003 with four league titles and an&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-110094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}