WRU's awful timing has made Tandy's daunting task even more challenging

THIS column was originally written to focus on Steve Tandy’s first Wales squad announcement and the matches that were supposed to signal the start of a more hopeful future.

- Graham Price

Steve Tandy's job has just become much harder, believes Graham Price

After the events of Friday, there is now only one place to start.

Tandy’s job has just been made a whole lot more difficult after his own bosses chose to drop a bomb days before the squad meet up for the first time.

Why the Welsh Rugby Union decided it was the right time to announce one of the regions is now firmly on death row, I don’t know. The decision to then effectively confirm it is either the Ospreys or Scarlets who won't exist in the future just made the whole thing even more insensitive.

We now have players being asked to play international rugby within a couple of weeks of being told their jobs may be gone in the not-too-distant future.

Why on earth couldn't this all wait until December when the games would have been done and the players would have more time to get their heads around it ahead of the Six Nations in February?

This is the latest WRU decision over a number of decades where, quite frankly, they have messed things up. This smacks of another accountancy exercise rather than a rugby exercise and, once again, the tribalism and heritage that makes Welsh rugby unique is dismissed.

The number of top rugby teams in Wales has been gradually reduced for longer than many will remember and huge mistakes have been made across many decades.

The big change obviously came in 2003 with the introduction of the regions by David Moffett. That in itself was a move that alienated supporters and even Moffett himself now admits was a mistake.

When professionalism came, and if four teams - initially five with Celtic Warriors - was the number that could be afforded, they should have been the four biggest clubs .

Cardiff, Swansea, Llanelli and Newport were all soaked in history and had the supporter bases to prosper.