THE Welsh Rugby Union board will decide who the next Wales coach will be, not the five-man panel responsible for interviewing the six candidates who have been shortlisted.

And support among the 245 clubs for a vote of no confidence in the WRU board at the scheduled EGM on May 14 is waning.

Gareth Jenkins, the Llanelli Scarlets coach who was passed over in favour of Mike Ruddock last time, says he has now been encouraged to apply again when he had indicated he couldn't work with the men running the WRU because the process has changed.

That process will now hand the final responsibility with the full board which must increase Jenkins' chances. Two of the people on the five-man panel are chief executive Steve Lewis and chairman David Pickering, who bypassed Jenkins last time.

Their presence, along with high performance director Mostyn Richards, could have prevented Jenkins from going for the job again.

The other two members of the panel are new board member Gerald Davies, a strong candidate to be the next WRU chairman, and Alan Jones, chairman of the game policy committee.

They could have been outvoted, but now the board have insisted that the final two candidates - probably Jenkins and Phil Davies, the former Wales captain now Leeds director of rugby - will be presented to them. They will decide whether to accept the recommendation of the panel or overrule it.

There could be two EGMs on May 14, the one called by the WRU to discuss the non-appointment of a group chief executive to succeed David Moffett and the one called by the clubs to discuss four major concerns - the group chief executive, the ticketing issue, the appointment of Millennium Stadium chief Paul Sergeant as a WRU director and the Mike Ruddock resignation.

But the Ruddock question can't now be discussed because an agreement has been reached with the WRU and Ruddock himself says he doesn't want to talk about it.

But the fifth question, the vote of no confidence in the board, may well not happen despite the efforts of former WRU board members to engineer it.

RTB Ebbw Vale deny they were one of the clubs who signed the letter to request an EGM, though they were named as one of the original 12.

Club chairman Haydn Richards said, "We never signed the letter and it was never sent. "We agreed with most things in it, but not with the vote of no confidence.

"Everything has been settled with Mike Ruddock now. We will have an EGM, but we want nothing to do with a vote of no confidence.

"What will happen if they all go? There's nobody else to do the job."

It is believed many clubs from all over Wales are now against holding a vote of no confidence.

But that does not necessarily mean Lewis and Pickering will survive. Lewis could still go if there is a decision to appoint a group chief executive and make the post of WRU chief executive redundant while Pickering could be replaced as chairman of the board by the board itself.

And the reason for the delay in holding one or even two EGMs until May 14 is because WRU president Keith Rowlands, who has to be in the chair on such an occasion, is on holiday.