Welsh rugby boss warns it will take up to five years to be competitive again

• ITV Cymru Wales sports reporter Matt Southcombe sits down with Ospreys chief executive Lance Bradley.

Ospreys CEO Lance Bradley has warned it could take up to five years for Welsh rugby to be competitive again.

For the better part of a decade, the success of Wales’ golden generation in the Test arena glossed over the myriad of cracks which were appearing beneath the top level.

The game in Wales has been in a quiet decline for years, with the four professional sides - Cardiff, Dragons, Ospreys and Scarlets - becoming less and less competitive.

It will come as little surprise to those who have been watching closely as budgets have been cut.

Wales were whitewashed in this year’s men's Six Nations for the first time in 21 years and three of our regional sides finished in the bottom five of the United Rugby Championship.

The Ospreys were the team to provide a glimmer of hope domestically this year but lost in the first round of the play-offs last week.

It took years for things to get this bad, and it’ll take years to recover. But a plan is being drawn up with the WRU and regions collaborating.

"There's undoubtedly challenges," Bradley told ITV Cymru Wales.

"Some of the things that have happened in the past have been poor - some of them very poor - but Abi [Tierney, WRU CEO] and her new team are addressing them.

"Some of it's difficult. Some of it will take a while. But if you keep on doing the same thing, you will keep on getting the same result."

He added: "What we’re developing is a five-year plan and by the end of that, we would expect the clubs and the national team to be properly competitive again.

"Could it happen earlier than that? Of course it could."

While Welsh rugby has been enduring its slow, painful decline - and we might not have reached the nadir just yet with budgets for next season being cut back again - change has been painfully hard to come by.

The regions and WRU might currently be engaged in a review process but a report into the state of the game was most recently commissioned just two years ago. One of the recommendations in the infamous ‘Oakwell Report’ was a reduction in the number of regions from four to three, to consolidate limited resources.

That, of course, has not come to pass but recently Nigel Walker, the WRU’s executive director of rugby, refused to rule it out.

Over the years, the Ospreys have often found themselves as the ones mooted to become extinct but it is not something Bradley is concerned about.

He explained: "When you're conducting a thorough review - and all the clubs are involved in it - you can't start that kind of review and say ‘we’re going to review everything but not that’.

"You have to at least consider everything."

But Bradley went on to stress that the "absolute plan" is for Wales to retain four professional teams moving forward. He also pointed out that having the widest possible player pool to choose from would maximise Wales’ chances of success at Test level.

At times, it has felt like success at the top level is all that has mattered to those holding the pursestrings in Welsh rugby, and some feel it has led to a neglect of the regional game.

But that has come home to roost this year and displayed itself in Wales’ miserable Six Nations campaign.

"It's really unusual to get sustainable success with a national team unless you also have sustainable success with your professional teams," Bradley explained.

Not content with playing his role in solving Welsh rugby’s problems, Bradley is also taking on a project bespoke to his region.

His first move when he came in as CEO earlier this year after spending five years in charge of Gloucester Rugby was to announce the Ospreys were moving home.

They currently play at the Swansea.com Stadium, which is owned by Swansea City Football Club. Facilities at the ground are impressive, the pitch is perfect and hospitality offerings are plentiful.

But the Ospreys come nowhere close to filling the 20,000-seater stadium and matchdays can feel soulless.

So now the region will set about redeveloping either the Brewery Field in Bridgend or St Helen’s in Swansea.

"The business is in pretty good shape," Bradley explained. "But shackled by not having our own stadium. So before I joined, I spoke to the people at Y11, the ownership group, and asked a couple of things.

"One of them was 'are you serious about getting your own stadium? Because I can pull some levers but they all require a new stadium'.

"I did feel strongly. The Swansea.com is a fabulous stadium. There are beautiful facilities, a beautiful pitch, everything's great about it except that it's twice as big as we need it to be.

"It's difficult to create an atmosphere at games in a 20,000-seat stadium. But also things like non-matchday income, stadium sponsorship - none of those things are possible when it's not not your own.

"You need to have somewhere where fans can gather before a game and socialise with each other and feel like they’re part of a rugby club and that's really hard to do in a big out-of-town stadium."

Bradley admits the finances of a multimillion-pound redevelopment of either ground are challenging but insists that the region’s five-year plans are feasible.

Next season will be the region’s last at the Swansea.com and they hope to make an announcement on their new home shortly but, Bradley adds, "it's a multimillion-pound property deal and we've got to get all of the details worked out".

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