{"id":33722,"date":"2025-08-19T20:01:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T20:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/welsh-rugby-union-to-propose-halving-professional-sides-to-two\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T20:01:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T20:01:10","slug":"welsh-rugby-union-to-propose-halving-professional-sides-to-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/welsh-rugby-union-to-propose-halving-professional-sides-to-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Welsh Rugby Union to propose halving professional sides to two"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">New director of rugby Dave Reddin, chief executive Abi Tierney and chair Richard Collier-Keywood have been involved in the plan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It remains unclear whether the two future sides being proposed will be new entities or existing teams. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The WRU has, though, proposed that there will be two organisations which will each have a men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s team.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There could be 50 players in each men&#8217;s squad with a budget of \u00a37.8m each, while the women&#8217;s squads will have 40 players apiece.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The WRU says there will be significantly elevated funding for each men&#8217;s squad, which would facilitate a radically different profile of talent and support.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Union says the two squads would feature predominantly Welsh-qualified players, while there would be a rethink on non-Welsh qualified players.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The WRU would fund the two men&#8217;s and two women&#8217;s teams, all of which would be operated under licences, with the governing body giving any owners or investors responsibility for all commercial operations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Phase one would involve the move of the two sides, men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s, operating on two sites.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There will also be a transition to contracting of players and staff within central national academies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Phase two would involve the clubs moving to training at one site which will be known as a national campus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This will be home to 400 people, including men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s national staff, professional and clubs staff and national academies. The men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s academies will be centralised.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The proposals include improving the standard of the Super Rygbi Cymru competition, which is the current level below the men&#8217;s fully professional game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There is also a pledge to establish a senior women&#8217;s domestic competition, with an acceptance there is a current lack of high-quality club rugby below the Celtic Challenge, where Gwalia Lightning and Brython Thunder compete.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c2enjxpmgm8o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New director of rugby Dave Reddin, chief executive Abi Tierney and chair Richard Collier-Keywood have been involved in the plan. It remains unclear whether the two future sides being proposed will be new entities or existing teams. The WRU has, though, proposed that there will be two organisations which will each have a men&#8217;s and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33722"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33724,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33722\/revisions\/33724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}