New Welsh rugby team formed by WRU to help find players who slipped through cracks
The Welsh Rugby Union are confident the creation of a Welsh Academies U23s side will produce more quality players for the professional game in Wales.
This Friday, Wales U20s will face the newly formed Welsh Academies U23s at the Arms Park, while a second fixture will take place a week later in Llandovery. Former senior Wales assistant Gareth Williams is in charge of the U23s side, with support from Bradley Davies, Ceri Jones, Craig Everett and Dan Fish.
Similar programmes are in place in other Tier One nations with an Emerging Ireland side, who have gone on tour to South Africa over the past few years, perhaps the best example. Wales U20s head coach Richard Whiffin is hopeful an U23s side will become a permanent part of the Welsh rugby calendar.
"With the U23s, the Welsh academies fixture, quite often you can be involved in the national set-up at U18s, U19s and U20s but it's a big jump up to URC and the national team," Whiffin told WalesOnline. "Sometimes you find those players can stall a little bit.
"The idea behind it is to create another representative team for players to aspire to and to get out of the comfort zone of their clubs and work with different coaches and players. A lot of national teams are putting on second team games, U23 games or emerging team games.
"I think it's the first step to that hopefully. This is a stepping stone to create another team and with that comes aspirational opportunities for players."
The U23s side will serve a number of different purposes, including acting as a stepping stone from age grade rugby and Super Rygbi to the professional game. But it will also act as a net to catch late developers who have taken a bit of extra time to find their feet in the senior game with the likes of former Wales U20s centre Ryan Wilkins, who has been in great form for Bridgend, a prime example.
"When those teams get announced you'll see there's players who have had lots of different routes into it," said Whiffin. "There'll be your standard player that comes through an academy from 16 all the way through, while there'll be guys who dropped out of the system and went to play semi-professional rugby who will be given a chance to get back into pro rugby."
Welsh rugby has been put through the ringer of late with the men's national team failing to win a single Test match in 2024, while the four professional clubs - Cardiff, Dragons, Ospreys and Scarlets - have struggled. The WRU have put some measures in place to improve the pathway, such as skills clinics for academy players, which includes coaching from the likes of Warren Gatland and Rob Howley,
They have also identified 60 players of national interest between the ages of 15 and 24 who will get specialised coaching. WRU Performance Pathway and Talent manager Andy Lloyd is confident the senior men's game will see the benefit over the next few years.
"The academy licence has finally been put in place along with the EPP and key changes to the Dewar Shield," Lloyd tells WalesOnline. "The development pathway takes time so the changes we have put in place now, we wont see the benefit of for another few years.
"This squad we've got now is the deepest squad I've seen for a while. We played Scotland before Christmas and gave 54 boys a chance. We haven't been able to do that before. Some really good players will miss out on this U20s squad.
"Look, every other nation is getting better as well and other nations have more players than us - but we can only control what we do. Our job is to bring through as many pro players as we can, but also give these boys an experience.
"Since Covid, the stability within the coaching group has made a difference. If you look at the U18s, a few of those boys are a year young like Dom Kossuth and Carwyn Legget-Jones.
"A number have come up to the U20s this year, like Steffan Emanuel. We've always got good players. Everything takes time. The initial stuff we are seeing has been positive.
"Not everything is going to be right and we'll review it as we go along. At the moment, this time last year on average there were only 14 boys eligible for the U20s playing week in, week out - but this year it's 26, so we are making progress."
