By paul
December 27 2005

Like Tristan Davies dropping the opening kick off and Barry Williams trying to find his middle jumper, regional rugby needs to get a grip.

As I write this Cardiff have pulled in their first sellout crowd for many-er blue moon, but don’t be fooled. In the corresponding fixture last Christmas, Rodney Parade was also packed to the rafters with a ten thousand or so capacity.

An east Wales Boxing Day (ish) derby, with a rugby icon on show at a fairly sociable time should always be a sellout, so unsurprisingly marketing has been minimal.

Likewise Stradey tomorrow could and should have a five figure attendance, even if either side has hardly been inspiring this campaign.

The blatant problem is why for the other fourteen or so home matches (Jonah excepted) in the season, anything above 6,000 is an achievement.

Variety is not the spice of life in Welsh regional rugby, moving down to four teams may suit the national team, and added greater squad depth but if anything regional rugby is far from vibrant. The lack of identity and meaning is paralyzing.

On Friday night, Scrum V spent all night talking about one thing, Gavin Hensons’ suspension. Whilst Llanelli and the Dragons meandered through eighty minutes of Celtic League rugby, in a sapping pre-Christmas slog. The importance of BBC Wales’s contribution to Welsh rugby cannot be underestimated, but one has to question who actually benefits from them showing a full eighty minute match every week.

For a start, perhaps it would be better to rotate live matches between them and S4C every week and avoid saturation point. Instead they could show extended highlights from one match, as Sky has done so well in the Heineken cup.

Missing internationals remain a big issue, don’t play before international weekends and add more significance to the remaining fixtures.

A positive step would be to re-structure the Celtic League in three stages;

- A main league, compromising of twelve or eleven teams, playing each other once, alternating between each side playing each other on a home or away each season. Played before the Six Nations.

- Two second stage pools, with 5/6 teams in, weighted in favor of how high teams finished in the main league, also teams would start with points awarded for those position (i.e eight league points to start a pool, followed by five, and the none for the rest)

- The top two from each group would qualify for semi finals, preceded by a final funnily enough.

Theoretically each side would get a minimum of seven or eight home games, add that to the three Heineken home matches, Powergen games and hopefully a stronger twelve team Welsh Premiership, there would be a lot more riding on matches.

Just two ideas, I’m sure you’ll disagree or have something far more ground breaking.