Dave Reddin was questioned on TNT Sports by Craig Doyle, Dan Biggar and Sam Warburton
Dave Reddin was interviewed on TNT Sports alongside Dan Biggar and Sam Warburton
WRU director of rugby and elite performance Dave Reddin has addressed a number of issues on live TV, revealing the WRU may be forced to find a different “fourth team” to enter in the United Rugby Championship next season.
Reddin appeared on TNT Sports alongside pundits Sam Warburton and Dan Biggar ahead of the Wales v South Africa match to explain his plan to cut the number of Welsh regions from four to three.
He insisted keeping all four was not an option and told Warburton the reason for the axe falling in the west, where one of the Scarlets or Ospreys will cease to exist, was due to player numbers and the number of schools in the area ahead of everything else.
Reddin confirmed the final outcome of getting rid of a team could run into next summer or even beyond and revealed the WRU may have to find another solution for entering a fourth team into the URC for next season. If the axe were to fall on a team shortly before next season was due to start, for example, any cut side continuing to compete would be emotionally “very difficult”, Reddin said.
The union may well need to still enter a fourth team to meet contractual commitments because a permanent replacement for them would likely not be in place at that stage and an axed side with no future is unlikely to be put forward. What a different fourth Welsh side would look like is unclear, but the assumption would be the WRU may need to call on semi-pro and/or academy players from Super Rygbi Cymru. Another possible outcome would be if a team from outside Wales could be found to fill the void at short notice.
Reddin said: “We’ve got to provide a solution for that fourth team. There’s a number of things in play, whether that’s a team from outside Wales or a solution from inside Wales. You know, clearly if that (fourth team) was to be a team that exists now but is, if you like, being wound down, that emotionally I think would be very, very difficult. So we’re cognisant of that but looking at other solutions as well.”
Reddin was then questioned by Warburton why west Wales has been targeted for the chop – a WRU decision that has left Ospreys and Scarlets fans furious.
He said: “I think fundamentally it’s the number of players and the number of schools are big factors in that decision. I think if we look back and look at the historical data about how many are being supplied (to the Wales team), sometimes that can skew our thinking. But you know, fundamentally it’s the first two criteria.”
Acknowledging how difficult the current situation is for supporters, Reddin added: “The emotion’s huge. I mean if it was my club that was disappearing you’d feel that and even more so if that’s the club that you’ve supported since you were tiny.
“So we’re not taking any of these decisions without any thought to that. We’ve also got to look to the future, you know, and look at where we are as a nation, how much talent we’ve got, and if we truly want to compete at the top level, then we have look at how do we be excellent. We don’t have the talent to support four teams at the level we want to and compete. I think we can with three.
“That three is not going to be purely Welsh talent in the beginning, but that’s the ambition going forward is that we really create a development system that gives us a problem with three. We’d love to have an oversupply”
Reddin confirmed the preferred option would be to find a consensus by the end of the year, but that outcome currently seems doubtful, with a tender process likely to start in January and due to last at least six months.
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