{"id":780850,"date":"2026-09-24T08:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T08:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/780850\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T08:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T08:08:08","slug":"united-rugby-championship-guide-to-welsh-clubs-chances-in-the-2026-27-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/780850\/","title":{"rendered":"United Rugby Championship: Guide to Welsh clubs’ chances in the 2026-27 season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last season: 15th<\/p>\n

Head coach: Filo Tiatia<\/p>\n

Co-captains: Ben Carter and Angus O’Brien<\/p>\n

Key man: Ryan Woodman – The loss of number eight Aaron Wainwright to Leicester<\/a> is huge but the blind-side flanker can help soften the blow. After facing Barbarians with Wales last summer, the uncapped forward can put himself in the mix for the World Cup.<\/p>\n

Prospects: Dragons’ much-improved 2025-26 has led to them setting a lofty target of being in the mix for the play-offs.<\/p>\n

Filo Tiatia’s side made the semi-finals of the Challenge Cup and had the biggest points swing in the URC, claiming 28 after the previous year’s embarrassing tally of nine.<\/p>\n

After four draws, Dragons feel that they can push into the race for the top eight.<\/a><\/p>\n

They will at least want to avoid being Wales’ lowest-ranked side – something they have been in 18 of 23 seasons – and end their 21-game losing streak against closest rivals Cardiff<\/a> that goes back to 2015.<\/p>\n

Dragons have made just three signings and only one of them, Tonga wing Anzelo Tu’itavuki, will feature in the first block of the season.<\/p>\n

After plenty of summers of upheaval, influential centre Aneurin Owen sees the lack of change as a positive.<\/p>\n

“It has meant we have been able to build on last season, we’ve not started from scratch,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Changes can be good but they can also be disruptive. We have banked all of the stuff from last season and been able to develop our game a lot more.”<\/p>\n

Dragons travel to Benetton but then play five fixtures in Wales before the break for the Nations Championship.<\/p>\n

They have home URC derbies against Scarlets and Ospreys, a Challenge Cup opener against Perpignan, an away fixture against Ospreys at the revamped St Helen’s and then a Newport fixture versus Zebre.<\/p>\n

“Last year it felt we didn’t get our season going until December when we got a win and confidence grew,” said Owen.<\/p>\n

“We need to kick on. There were some promising signs last season, especially in the cup, but we still finished 15th.<\/p>\n

“The challenge we have set as a group is to get after it in the league and Europe, and it all starts with this first block. We can get some momentum and belief.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last season: 15th Head coach: Filo Tiatia Co-captains: Ben Carter and Angus O’Brien Key man: Ryan Woodman –…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-780850","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\/780850","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=780850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}