{"id":526653,"date":"2026-03-08T11:31:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T11:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/526653\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T11:31:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T11:31:07","slug":"urc-welsh-uncertainty-wont-hit-dragons-recruitment-blumberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/526653\/","title":{"rendered":"URC: Welsh uncertainty won&#8217;t hit Dragons&#8217; recruitment &#8211; Blumberg"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dragons are looking to make &#8220;three to four&#8221; signings and, after signing a new Professional Rugby Agreement with the WRU last year, will operate on a bigger player budget than this season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Replacing talisman Aaron Wainwright is a priority after the Wales number eight opted to turn down contract offers in favour of a fresh challenge with Leicester.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Losing Aaron was a massive blow for us as a club and we threw everything at keeping him,&#8221; said Blumberg.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We offered him the opportunity to stay on favourable terms, but he explained that he wanted to experience something else outside of Gwent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;With that in mind, replacing Aaron is at the forefront of our recruitment process and we have some great candidates that Filo and the team are talking to.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wainwright has made 131 appearances for Dragons and is currently showing what they will miss as one of Wales&#8217; standout performers in the Six Nations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There is only one Aaron Wainwright so we have got to find someone who can do more than half the job,&#8221; said head coach Tiatia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It takes a while to find the right person when trying to replace someone like for like. We are talking to a lot of young men that fit the bill before we pull the trigger.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dragons are looking to make &#8220;three to four&#8221; signings and, after signing a new Professional Rugby Agreement with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-526653","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\/526653","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=526653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}