Regional rugby has been around for 13 years – soon to be 14 as we head towards 2017 – but the name-calling over names shows no signs of going away. Robin Davey says the label-obsessed regions tend to be those in the east of Wales, where the teams have been less successful, too.

 

What’s in a name? A heck of a lot when it comes to Welsh rugby, for though the regional structure is now 13 years old the debate over the names of the teams still rages on.

Debate is actually a polite way of describing it, for exchanges among fans, throughout social media in particular, are more often than not positively vitriolic.

Many in the Valley communities feel disenfranchised, excluded from the top table because of the concentration of the four professional teams along the M4 corridor from Newport in the east to Llanelli in the west.

As a result many fans have become increasingly bitter, feeling they can’t go down to the cities of Cardiff and Newport, for example, to support teams they have no identity or affinity with.

And even within the designated regions there is discord – lots disliking regional names Dragons or Blues, again feeling they have no association with them. They resent the loss of their club names at the highest level even if they are retained in the Premiership.

We have to go way back to the days of David Moffett and the parlous state of rugby finances in Wales to find the beginnings of this discontent which gradually progressed to outrage in many quarters.

The game simply couldn’t afford a dozen or so teams at the highest level, it was basically going broke, so Moffett came up with the idea of five regions. It was WRU funding, backed up by input from investors.

Five rapidly became four when the Celtic Warriors went bust, their players were farmed out to the other regions and areas like Pontypridd and Bridgend were incorporated into them.

Moffett firmly believed the region that would prove the easiest and most successful was the one in the east based at Rodney Parade which became known as the Dragons.

Gwent, he reasoned, already existed as a county and had a county team, so no problem there. But playing as a county side was one thing, expecting them to get along with one another as a region another matter altogether.

For one village or town runs into another, and they all ‘hate’ one another. In fact, that kind of rivalry was for many years part of the lifeblood of the game.

Moffett failed to realise that not only was their such animosity between them but where they were united was in their antipathy towards Newport.

‘Watch some kind of artificially created side playing out of Rodney Parade? Over my dead body’ – that was, and still is, exactly the type of reaction from many up in the valleys of Gwent.

Similarly, not many, if any, in the Rhondda are prepared to go to the Arms Park to support a side whose fans regard the name as Cardiff, not the Blues at all, and constantly chant ‘Cardiff’ from the stands in support of the side.

So we have the great divide, some wanting the old club names of Cardiff and Newport to be restored while others wish they would be thrown into the dustbin replaced by fully regional sides incorporating everyone and even divided into areas like east, west and north.

Plenty more are sick and tired of all the rows and vote with their feet, staying away altogether, unattracted by what’s on offer.

But while it’s pretty much open warfare in the east, peace, of sorts, broke out in the west almost from the start. At Llanelli the team was always known as the Scarlets anyway and even at their neighbours the choice of the Ospreys for a combined Swansea-Neath side dovetailed when the name could well have alienated fans.

They merged pretty successfully, differences were largely forgotten and, far from the Gwent region being an easy transition as Moffett predicted, it was the Ospreys who soared.

In fact, they have become the most successful of the four regions with hefty financial backing initially helping attract some world stars. They became known as the galacticos and also produced a vast array of internationals.

And further afield Super Rugby caught on pretty quickly, too, with team names like Hurricanes, Stormers and Reds accepted and adopted comfortably in a top rate southern hemisphere competition.

Not so back in Wales, or in the east at any rate, where 13 years further on the great rugby row continues to dominate and shows no sign of abating as we prepare for 2017.

Until then, a happy Christmas!