Rugby Australia to target top NRL talent

[T to the T]

Wales is a dogs breakfast both on and off the field, the national team can’t even fill thier stadium anymore on the back of 11 consecutive defeats. The upper bowl was nearly totally empty last week v Wallabies, that would have been unheard of a few years ago.

Couple amendments needed. For the Australia game, the upper bowl was a 3rd to half full in fairness. This is still dire for the WRU as they are missing out on £500k to £1m they really need, same for the Fiji and no doubt the South Africa matches. The stadium will more or less always be full for 6 Nations however this is more due to away fans picking up tickets which home fans would've snatched instantly.

That aside, the code is in crisis here and is in 20 years in the making. David Moffett (name may be familiar) wielding the axe on the domestic front, taking the old Welsh Premiership from 9 teams to 5, and then 4, in a new Celtic League. Fans, like myself, of clubs kicked out turned our bad/had far less interest in RU. That number was probably manageable when the national team were successful, and bandwagon jumpers were able to fill the gap and keep money going into the WRU's coffers but that isn't the case anymore.

The WRU is an archaic organisation in it's structure, blighted by cronyism and misogyny and wasn't fit for 1995 when RU went openly professional, let alone 2024. Funds are given to community clubs (who make up the Union) to the detriment of funding of the professional game, and consequently academies, which has weakened RU's playing talent here.

Welsh football/soccer being on the up has done what the Socceroos has done to the Wallabies and eroded the view that the RU national side were the primary international sporting representatives of the nation. Football is far more popular with the youth, RU is not getting all the cream of the crop anymore, and in a nation of only 3m population, the dearth in world class talent is becoming clear.

It's a perfect storm whereby unless the WRU reforms (and the clubs who comprise the union need to vote in national rather than self interest) then the necessary changes won't be made and Welsh RU will lurch from crisis to crisis.

A lot of this may ring familiar but it's a stop the NRL has already passed on it's journey, hence the expansion of the game and it's earning $$$ these days.