Life of Moffett

Provincial rugby... a team representing the Principality at the highest level from North Wales?

I've never heard such rubbish and were it not so serious it would be straight out of Monty Python.

For, make no mistake about it, our very rugby heritage is at stake here.

Yet another Southern Hemisphere hatchet man has been brought in by the Welsh Rugby Union threatening to wreck everything that means so much to so many of us.

It's an emotive issue and the WRU have made it even more so by employing yet another Southern Hemisphere bigwig, again at a salary of over £200,000, so taking badly needed revenue away from the Welsh game.

First Graham Henry, then Steve Hansen and now David Moffett.

And they have a common theme - the destruction of Welsh rugby as we have known it. Coming from countries like New Zealand and Australia, obviously they are going to try to enforce their ideas upon us.

Provincial rugby has worked in the Southern Hemisphere, partly because of the sheer size of the countries involved and partly because there is no great tradition of club rugby there.

But it cannot be said often enough, here it is all about club rugby first, second and last. We are not New Zealand, Australia or South Africa or even Ireland.

For people like Eddie Butler to say tradition doesn't count is absolute nonsense. Of course it matters.

Now that clubs like Llanelli and Cardiff have been thrown into the provincial ring if the Moffett plan goes ahead, ex-players of the calibre of Phil Bennett, Ray Gravell and Mike Hall are joining the chorus of protest.

They don't want to see the club game, which is the bedrock of Welsh rugby, torn asunder and neither do I.

For Moffett and others like Terry Cobner to say the clubs will still be there underpinning the provincial structure may in theory be accurate, but in reality it's more rubbish.

Just what kind of sides would Newport, Cardiff and Llanelli put out?

It would be a mixture of those not good enough for the provincial sides plus under-21 players, all taking part in an all Welsh semi-professional league with nowhere to go.

No longer would the giants of Welsh rugby be playing in European or cross-border competition. They would be relegated to also-rans.

No-one is going to want to watch utterly soulless combined teams lacking any identity and no-one is going to watch their club sides so drastically changed as to be rendered meaningless.

As for the fiasco of a North Wales side, the reaction of Neath official Mike Cuddy that it would be like Moffett putting a team on Ayers Rock in the Australian outback says it all.

Can you imagine it, a squad bussed up to North Wales from the south every week, with two men and a dog in tow behind to watch it with the local population, who have little interest in rugby (even if they turn out once a year to watch Wales), going to watch Liverpool in the Premiership and the rest preferring to watch paint dry?

Would a Gwent side have done any better than Newport in beating London Irish on Saturday? Would West Wales have fared any better than Llanelli in their superb victory at Sale?

Of course they wouldn't have, so why force a system on us that the public have no desire to see?

Why ram a structure down our throats that, far from improving interest and appeal, would only drive people away in droves?

Welsh rugby is tribal, always has been, always will be.

Someone said that the Southern Hemisphere in the shape of Henry, Hansen and now Moffett have thrashed us again.

Why do we have these people in our midst? Why do we pay them such vast sums?

They, and a few from within, cannot be allowed to get away with this. Welsh rugby cannot be allowed to die.

For the first time in my life I find it appealing for strike action to be used as a bargaining tool.

If the powers that be insist on this foul plan going ahead then top clubs should refuse permission for their players to represent Wales.

And Newport should actively pursue the possibility of playing in England or even refuse permision for their ground, which they own, to be used for provincial rugby. They haven't even been asked by the WRU.

But, best of all, get rid of the people who have come in from Down Under and the misguided men at the top who have employed them and replace them with people who really do have the best interests of Welsh rugby at heart.