WELSH club rugby is bankrupt and unless proposals put forward by the six leading clubs are

accepted it will cease to exist, claimed spokesman Stuart Gallacher, pictured, today.

And the Newport model was held up as the proper way to run Welsh club rugby at the launch of

Rugby Partnership Wales' bid for a major say in the future of the game.

The RPW's six clubs - Newport, Cardiff, Swansea, Llanelli, Bridgend and Pontypridd - issued their

vision statement at a Press conference today.

"The game is effectively bankrupt," said Gallacher. "It is being kept afloat, even at its current

level, thanks to the continued generosity of a handful of individual benefactors who are

subsidising not only the club game in Wales, but the national game too.

"Since the advent of professional rugby in Wales they have spent £15m keeping people in

employment on and off the pitch.

"This has meant £15m the WRU has not had to invest into the game. Without the generosity of

these benefactors professional rugby in Wales would by now be in the same state as professional

soccer in the Principality.

"These benefactors have kept Wales' best players in Wales and on many occasions have

underwritten the contracts of these players.

"In turn the top level players in the Premier clubs have encouraged younger players to join them.

But there is no money for development.

"Away from the pitch the game is still in the grasp of amateur management incapable of

delivering the change in structure the game needs."

Gallacher singled out Newport as the way ahead, and club chief executive Keith Grainger said:

"The Newport experience has proved that in Wales the flavour and the demand does exist.

"In Wales we turn the club game into a business, but it has not been run in a business-like way.

We have to maximise the opportunities.

"Any business needs a new business plan and we need one if we need to continue at this level."

Gallacher insisted Welsh players were not overpaid, claiming the average salary was £30,000-

£40,000 a year compared with £60,000 in England.

And he claimed the WRU could not afford to run three or four provincial sides.

"I don't believe the six clubs and our plan can be ignored," he said. "We are in melt down and if

the Union wish to pick up the pieces and set up provincial sides the club game will be

destroyed."