{"id":78547,"date":"2025-08-19T20:18:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T20:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/78547\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T20:18:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T20:18:17","slug":"welsh-rugby-union-to-propose-halving-professional-sides-to-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/78547\/","title":{"rendered":"Welsh Rugby Union to propose halving professional sides to two"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">New director of rugby Dave Reddin, chief executive Abi Tierney and chair Richard Collier-Keywood have been involved in the plan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It remains unclear whether the two future sides being proposed will be new entities or existing teams. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The WRU has, though, proposed that there will be two organisations which will each have a men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s team.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There could be 50 players in each men&#8217;s squad with a budget of \u00a37.8m each, while the women&#8217;s squads will have 40 players apiece.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The WRU says there will be significantly elevated funding for each men&#8217;s squad, which would facilitate a radically different profile of talent and support.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Union says the two squads would feature predominantly Welsh-qualified players, while there would be a rethink on non-Welsh qualified players.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The WRU would fund the two men&#8217;s and two women&#8217;s teams, all of which would be operated under licences, with the governing body giving any owners or investors responsibility for all commercial operations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Phase one would involve the move of the two sides, men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s, operating on two sites.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There will also be a transition to contracting of players and staff within central national academies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Phase two would involve the clubs moving to training at one site which will be known as a national campus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This will be home to 400 people, including men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s national staff, professional and clubs staff and national academies. The men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s academies will be centralised.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The proposals include improving the standard of the Super Rygbi Cymru competition, which is the current level below the men&#8217;s fully professional game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There is also a pledge to establish a senior women&#8217;s domestic competition, with an acceptance there is a current lack of high-quality club rugby below the Celtic Challenge, where Gwalia Lightning and Brython Thunder compete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New director of rugby Dave Reddin, chief executive Abi Tierney and chair Richard Collier-Keywood have been involved in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-78547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78547","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=78547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}