League seeks Welsh toehold

Press, 2 September 1981, Page 24

League seeks Welsh toehold

The Welsh Rugby Union, a body of almost mystical power and influence in the principality, will be looking with some trepidation this week towards Cardiff City Football Ground, where the Blue Dragons are to introduce the heresy of rugby league.

In this bastion of the union code, 13-man rugby is regarded as rather more unpleasant and dangerous than bubonic plague. Until now its only saving grace has been that it was confined to the Lancashire and Yorkshire tripe and black pudding belts. But now the disease is spreading and Cardiff Football Club is to follow Fulham and Chelsea in introducing what is disparagingly known as “the other code.”

The Blue Dragons have been formed in the hope that they will help to restore the ailing finances of the soccer club, and soon the ground will ring to the strange accents of supporters from Keighley, Batley, Dewsbury and Bramley. For the union purist there is an almost unbearable irony connected with the saga, for the driving force behind the Blue Dragons is Mr David Watkins, a former captain of the Welsh national rugby union team, who abandoned a glittering career in the amateur , game to seek financial security among the dark satanic mills.

“I had received every honour the union game could give, but it did not pay the mortgage or the television

licence,” he said. "So I was lured to Salford for what was then the highest fee ever paid to a professional rugby player.” ■ The move revitalised him, and Mr Watkins again proved that union men can cross the great divide and still produce the goods. The rugby establishment in

Wales is not the most forgiving body, and Mr Watkins has already felt the first draught of the cold war. After accepting two tickets for the Cardiff RFCs gala dinner in aid of the WRU’s charitable fund, he was approached and asked not to attend because his presence would cause embarrassment.

Former Welsh Rugby League players who return home and wish to help the union game run headlong

into rule 2, clause 7 of the WRU rule book, which says "no club shall knowingly accept in membership a person who has forfeited his status as an amateur." Clause 6 emphasizes the point, banning former professionals from having anything to do with union clubs. There is in all this a certain hypocrisy, for it is a standing joke in Wales that some first-class clubs use an extremely liberal interpretation of the rule which allows them to pay “reasonable" out-of-pocket expenses.

An effort to establish the "other code” in Cardiff was last made 30 years ago and that attempt ended dismally when the team withdraw within a year, financially and physically demoralised, having won five games, lost 31 and conceded 1024 points against 342. That experiment cost the rugby league SNZSIB2 before the club was ruled to be an unsound proposition. Mr Watkins is acutely aware of the cold currents, but he believes that both codes can. prosper even within the citadel of rugby union.. “I have no illusions. The fans will demand entertainment and success. If I can deliver that, then we shall survive.”

So far, he has signed on 22 players including the prize catch of Steve Fenwick, who captained the Welsh union side last year, and two of his fellow internationals, Tommy David and Paul Ringer. — By TIM JONES of the Times (through NZPA).