Tierney has outlined why the WRU continues to plan to reduce the number of professional teams which it says will help release money to invest in Wales’ development pathway.<\/p>\n
“I think if we remain with the status quo we’ll continue to see uncompetitive regional teams,” said Tierney.<\/p>\n
“As a result of that you potentially will lose benefactors over time, fan numbers will continue to drop, players won’t want to play there.<\/p>\n
“So there’s lots of risks around this.”<\/p>\n
Tierney could not answer when the final decision will be made, although stated in the EGM that a delay will harm Welsh rugby’s future.<\/p>\n
The four regions – Cardiff, Ospreys, Scarlets and Dragons – will play in the United Rugby Championship (URC) next season but there are still no guarantees what happens next.<\/p>\n
“I wish I could give information, and I keep getting asked that question lots of different ways, but I can’t give you a date at the moment,” Tierney said. <\/p>\n
“We’re in complex processes and they are difficult decisions that are going to last a generation.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got to make sure they’re not rushed, they are the right decisions and in the best interest of Welsh rugby.”<\/p>\n
Tierney also confirmed the WRU is down \u00a36m on forecasted ticket sales for the 2025 Autumn Nations Series and 2026 Six Nations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tierney has outlined why the WRU continues to plan to reduce the number of professional teams which it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-533460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}