Wales's 50-10 defeat by England last weekend will be the norm rather than the exception unless radical changes are made at the top end of the game, leading clubs in the principality warned last night.
Wales face Scotland at the Millennium Stadium a week tomorrow, but a more important meeting will take place the following day when the 239 member clubs of the Welsh Rugby Union debate a proposal to cut the number of professional clubs from nine to six the season after next.
Even though the motion will be proposed by the WRU's general committee, the so-called Gang of Six clubs who make up Rugby Partnership Wales (RPW) - Llanelli, Swansea, Newport, Cardiff, Bridgend and Pontypridd - are not confident it will be carried and next week will send letters to all the member clubs explaining why they feel the Welsh game has no choice but to agree to the change.
"If things stay as they are, with nine clubs sharing too little money, then benefactors, who are each pumping £12,000 a week into the leading clubs will probably walk away and we will all have to become semi-professional," said Stuart Gallacher, the RPW chairman and Llanelli's chief executive.
"We would not only be unable to afford the salaries of the leading players in Wales but we would not have the resources to fund academy sides. That would drive the most promising youngsters in Wales into the arms of clubs on the other side of the Severn Bridge, where they would only have to live for three years before becoming qualified to play for England. Unless change is delivered immediately, the days of a victorious Wales side will become a thing of the past."
RPW painted an apocalyptic future if the proposal failed, especially if a counter-motion agreed by the First Division clubs, that there should be 12 sides in the top-flight from next season, is carried at the emer gency meeting on April 7, all the more so because it is virtually certain that a working party chaired by the president of the WRU, Sir Tasker Watkins, which recommended root-and-branch reform of the governing body, looks doomed to failure.
"Last Saturday was a very sad afternoon for Welsh rugby," said Gallacher. "We believe the only way forward for the national side is to reduce the number of professional clubs so that resources can be harnessed properly. There is not enough money in the Welsh game, nor quality players of sufficient quality, to justify having any more.
"This is not just a problem facing the top clubs: the junior sides are financed by money generated by the international game but we have already seen falling attendances at the Millennium Stadium and if Wales continue to slide down the rankings, there will be less and less to go round for everyone.
"RPW accepts that we have perhaps not got our message across as we should have. We have been portrayed as elitist and greedy, but our plan for the future will benefit the whole game, while the status quo will probably bankrupt it.
"This is not a them-or-us issue and we accept that the six clubs which make up our group may not all be part of the eventual elite. It is a question of what is best for Welsh rugby and in the seven years since the game went open, we have not progressed one inch."
Gallacher fought shy of saying that the Wales caretaker coach Steve Hansen would be better off returning to New Zealand if the six-club proposal falls, but he did remark: "Steve can only work with what he's got and at the moment it is not good enough. That will remain the case until the right decisions our made for our game."
· Bristol's flanker Craig Short has signed a new two-year contract with the Premiership club. "Craig has become a talisman for the team and is an example of everything that is good in the professional era," said the coach Dean Ryan.
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