IF SWANSEA AND CARDIFF MERGED INTO WALES FC.

I find the league structure in Welsh rugby beautiful. I wouldn’t like to guess at what percentage of you are aware of how it works, it could be well-known to all of you or to only those who play it but I’ll explain it anyway:-

Basically. You have Wales. Then you have the 4 regions. Ospreys being our one. And then each of the 4 regions have their own league structure. In our case the West Central League.

The league structure is there for players to play rugby obviously but then to nurture talent through the leagues into the region and Wales. I won’t get into whether it works or anything else about it, that’s not the point.

The point is how beautiful it is. How there is a system designed to have a ‘big team’ which has an affiliated league below it.

Could that work in football?

The short answer is no.

History of clubs, rivalries mean that it’s never going to happen….. although this was the very case with Neath, Bridgend and Swansea RFC merging for the Ospreys…… again, let’s not get into whether it could work. Lets just mess about.

In football, we have 20 teams in the Premier League. The top flight. Let’s abolish relegation and just have 20 ‘regions’. The population of England and Wales is just shy of 60 million, so we’d be looking for 20 teams with each one having a population of about 3 million….. we all know the population of Wales.

So Wales becomes a Premiership ‘region’ in its own right. Home games rotate from Cardiff, Swansea, Newport and Wrexham as Wales FC faces other regions challenging for the Premiership and Champions League places.

But then there is the league structure. The Welsh League becomes the Welsh League plus Swansea, Cardiff, Wrexham and Newport (plus a couple others).  These sides are ‘feeder clubs’.

Players who play for Swansea, Cardiff, Newport etc.. can also play for Wales FC should they hit form and be good enough. Equally, players at Wales FC who are maybe returning from injury or out of form are able to ‘drop down’ to Swansea/Cardiff to get some game time.

Below this is the Swansea League as we have it today but with closer affiliations to Swansea FC. So lets say that the Wales FC keeper is out injured and the Swansea FC keeper is promoted to Wales FC. Swansea FC then look into their league structure to replace him, the Penlan youngster who’s kept 4 clean sheets on the bounce gets his chance. 

The reality is that it is never going to happen and never should happen. There is much debate about whether the regions in rugby has worked and the problems which it has caused is the same issues that it would cause here.

Swansea City was formed over 100 years ago, Cardiff city are our arch rivals, to create a ‘super club’ which joined us couldn’t work. And if we did embrace Wales FC as fans, what about Swansea City FC? How many would watch Swansea City FC (without the top players who go to Wales FC) play TNS?

I do stick to my opening line though. The League structure in Welsh rugby is beautiful.