NEWPORT Gwent Dragons chairman Martyn Hazell says the Magners League is the reason for the poor crowds they attract.

Regional rugby has come under the microscope as never before this week after the failure of the Welsh teams in the Heineken Cup.

The Dragons and Cardiff Blues were knocked out by the halfway stage of the pool matches leading to Blues chairman Peter Thomas ordering major cutbacks in their playing budget.

The Ospreys again under-achieved considering the strength of their squad, making a dismal exit after their defeat by London Irish who had lost their previous ten matches.

That leaves only the Scarlets with a vague hope of reaching the quarter-finals and they have to win in Perpignan tomorrow while hoping Leicester suffer a shock defeat against Treviso.

The recriminations have been going on all week, the Argus conducting its own investigation, with a series of explanations about why the Welsh teams have performed so badly.

Lack of resources on and off the field have been heavily flagged up as the major reason, especially compared with the major sides in France, England and Ireland.

Leading Welsh players like James Hook - due to announce his new destination next Wednesday - Lee Byrne and possibly Shane Williams are said to be following Gavin Henson out of Wales, while the Blues are releasing Martyn Williams and Tom Shanklin.

Such is the extent of the fall-out, but Dragons chairman Hazell says they are not helped in a financial sense by the Magners League, though admitting there is no alternative.

“People ask why the crowds are low, but apart from the derbies there are next to no travelling fans and the costs are enormous,” he said.

“We go to Ireland four times, Scotland twice and Italy twice. How many travelling fans are there, and when these teams come to Wales for a league game how many supporters do they bring?

“When we play the Blues, Ospreys and Scarlets we get reasonable crowds, but how many people come from, say Connacht?

“People ask why there aren’t crowds of 10,000 at Newport or 20,000 at Cardiff, but who’s going to watch the Blues play Connacht?

“There is no fan base for these games and moneywise it’s hopeless. The travelling costs for the year are a minimum of £250,000 at around £30,000 or £40,000 a time for the games in Scotland, Ireland and Italy, it’s horrendous.

“And the Blues often charter a flight so that costs them even more. I know we get the TV money, but we don’t get the fans.

“When we go to Aironi in a few weeks we might take 20 people with us, but in England when Bath play Gloucester, for example, the visiting team will take thousands of fans with them and they play in front of full houses.

“Newcastle might have the odd flight, but in England almost everyone just gets in their car and drives to the game.

“The English clubs don’t want us, that horse bolted years ago when Cardiff and Swansea played a year in a rebel league against English teams and they were prepared to have four Welsh teams but not five, which some here wanted.

“But I accept there is no alternative to the league we play in. If Scotland and Ireland didn’t have this they might as well pack it in altogether.

“We (the Dragons) average crowds of about four-and-a-half thousand whereas Leicester get over 20,000 every week and Northampton 13,000, and they have multi-millionaire backers. We’re in Wales and we’re in the middle of a recession.”

As for the Dragons’ situation, Hazell says: “We are losing money, we’re in the red not the black, but we’re not quite as bad as some of the other regions.

“We’ve started work on the new stand and hospitality area, we need it to try to make ends meet.”