WRU's two-team proposal echoes Sam Warburton's idea from six months ago
The union is to announce its preferred plan for the future of Welsh rugby, with the number of professional teams cut to two
Warburton previously suggested merging the Welsh regions into 'East and West' teams
The Welsh Rugby Union is preparing to officially announce its preferred plan for the future of rugby in Wales, with cutting the number of professional teams from four to two seen as the optimal solution.
In what is a seismic change for the Welsh rugby landscape, the union's proposal to solve the current issues facing the national game could now see the number of professional sides halved, with two teams made up of 50 players each - and with playing budgets of £7.8 million - going forward.
The plan will be consulted on by the game's key stakeholders over the next six weeks, with a final decision due in October. It is not yet clear whether the two surviving clubs would be any of the existing four or if two brand new entities will be created, with it understood that senior figures within Welsh rugby want one based in the east, and another in the west.
The preferred option will be the key part of a consultation document that will also include other potential options.
Each club will be made up of a men's team and a women's team while, as exclusively reported by WalesOnline last month, a new centre of excellence is in the pipeline.
The new professional layout will also be underpinned with a much-improved and financed Super Rygbi Cymru competition, which will involve Welsh club sides. Sign up to Inside Welsh rugby on Substack to get exclusive news stories and insight from behind the scenes in Welsh rugby
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Further details of that particular element are set to emerge over the coming weeks, but it is not the first time that such a proposal has been made, with the WRU's preferred plan echoing an idea put forward by former Wales captain Sam Warburton six months ago.
In the wake of Warren Gatland's departure as Wales head coach in February, Warburton laid out his plan for what the WRU should do next, admitting that a change of coach was a "superficial fix" to address Welsh rugby's "multitude of problems".
Writing in his column for The Times, the former Cardiff flanker confessed that the WRU would want "one last shot" at making four professional sides work, and suggested that a 'two plus two' funding model - in which two sides receive more funding than the other two to allow them to be competitive - would be the way forward if four regions remained.
However, Warburton went on to suggest another idea, namely merging the existing regions into 'East' and 'West' sides, while he admitted that the creation of a third North Wales region was also a possibility, claiming he had heard there was a "lot of interest" from investors if that transpired.
Finally, he proposed that with a small number of 'super regions' created, there would be a strong group of players of national interest, allowing those playing below that level to be made available to clubs in a beefed-up, more competitive Super Rygbi Cymru league.
"The other option that should be considered is merging the regions into East and West," Warburton wrote. "I played for East Wales as a youngster against the West and was very proud to do so. If two teams are not considered enough then let's create another region up in North Wales.
"Ideally, then, those three regions would play in an Anglo-Welsh competition, but first we have to prove that we are good enough to do so. If we stay in the URC, so be it.
"With three super regions, you would probably then have a group of 35 contracted players of national interest," he added. "Anybody who's not a player of national interest would then be dual-contracted or seconded to a club side in the Super Rygbi Cymru league.
"There, we could go as tribal as we want, with all the traditional clubs in a ten-team league, and hopefully some of them could participate in the Premiership Cup in England.
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"It would work like the system in New Zealand, which I have always liked, where if a player is not playing Super Rugby Pacific he will then turn out in the National Provincial Championship (NPC)."
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