IF EVER proof were needed of how rugby in Wales is in a complete mess, it was available at Newport on Sunday.

The occasion wasn't much, a game between a Newport team short of about ten regulars playing a non-rugby country like Uruguay.

Yet the crowd was a staggering 8,143, more than any other club in Wales manages for a league game and greater than most in England can attract.

Many of those present were schoolchildren, at the ground for the first time to watch a match having first sampled all the attractions of the family village behind the pitch.

No doubt many of them enjoyed the experience and are asking their dads to take them back for another go.

But their dads can't do that, not next week, not the week after, not even before Christmas. Why? Because Newport's next home game is not until Boxing day!

How absolutely ridiculous. How crazy, beyond belief. Imagine a similar situation in top professional football with no home games for almost two months.

There would be only one outcome, complete mutiny, and rightly so. For that is no way to run a sport and it's no way to run a business which is what top sport has now become.

How on earth can rugby clubs with big budgets of over £1m a year be expected to manage when they don't have a home game for so long? It's madness.

Cardiff are not involved in the Celtic League quarter-finals next week, so they don't have a game, apart from a friendly against Cambridge University, for over a month either. More madness.

Yet no less a figure than Graham Henry wants fewer games! And Wales team manager Alan Phillips last week claimed the Wales management should have first call on the players.

He believes they should tell the clubs what they want, that they should be able to limit the amount of rugby players are involved in and that they should insist the clubs switch players around if they so wish.

What a complete cheek. Surely Phillips realises it is the clubs who pay the majority of a player's salary and that it is club backers who invest heavily in players, facilities and stadia, yet he expects to be able to call the tune.

Phillips and Henry have got another think coming if they believe they can force through a reduction in fixtures and dictate what they can do with the players. Most fans want their clubs to play more rugby, not less. They are fed up with internationals through November on top of the Six Nations.

Wales may be the shop window, but the international scene can't dominate or dictate to the clubs, and the sooner those at the top realise it the better. WRU chairman Glanmor Griffiths was at Rodney Parade on Sunday and he observed what kind of crowd Newport can attract and the facilities they provide.

It's a pity the WRU can't follow suit, but hopefully they can now at least try. While on the subject of Newport, it was also the turn of the football team to do the town proud at the weekend.

Their FA Cup draw at Football League Second Division Blackpool, three divisions and 75 places higher, reflects credit on everyone at the club.

This is the kind of result men like David Hando, who re-formed the club, put up with playing across the border in England and successfully took on the FAW in court, must have dreamt about.

Now another ground in the town at Spytty Park will be packed to the rafters for the replay a week tomorrow.

If County win and then get through a second round tie at home, who knows, it really could be dreamland.