Get rid of the regions and call for Cotter, says Ring

MARK Ring never thought Welsh rugby would come to this; their four regional teams failing en masse to meet the modest qualifying criteria for the non-champion zone of the Champions Cup.

- PETER JACKSON

And so, in keeping with the national team’s disappearance from the world’s top ten, Europe’s elite club tournament kicked off for the first time without a single Welsh team, not even a token one to make up the numbers for old time’s sake.

Five of the Six Nations are there among the 24, all except the one beaten by the rest earlier in the year. A nation that has won more Grand Slams post-war than any other finds itself on the outside looking in, the poor man of Europe in every sense.

As a boy, Ring sold programmes outside the Arms Park on the understanding that he could sneak inside free of charge to watch his idol, Barry John (‘a free spirit, always entertaining’) at play alongside Gareth Edwards and Gerald Davies.

A fly-half blessed by a gift for the outrageous but cursed by knee trouble, Ring’s vivid imagination allowed him to see moves before anyone else. Now all he sees is a landscape unrecognisable from the one he used to know, when no country could match the Welsh clubs for pulling power and Cardiff went to within an extra-time penalty of winning the first European final.

Ring has never been slow to say what he thinks about the state of his country’s supposed national game. If what he says about it here and now sounds like a cry from the wilderness, then it’s worth listening to all the more for being exactly that.

As the Welsh Rugby Union digs into the trenches behind a review into last month’s non-performances which should have taken days rather than weeks, Ring, right, is in no doubt what he would do, starting with his No.1 choice as head coach.