Posted by Ahead of the 2026/27 season getting underway the BBC Scrum V Podcast spoke to Gareth Anscombe at the United Rugby Championship media day and he said something that got me thinking.
Chicken – as the fly-half is affectionately known – has always been a good talker and seemingly a deep thinker about the game, especially as his career has progressed into it’s later years, and in interview with Gareth Rhys Owen and Lauren Salter discussed the approach of supporters and the media in promoting young Welsh players’ chances of making the national team.
“I think the issue we’ve had in the past, particularly in Wales, is within the regions as soon as you have a good game at URC level there’s usually an article the next day that goes with it about making a Welsh squad. I think where we need to get to is just driving a bit more consistency around it. You look at the top teams in the world and guys have to have one or two good seasons, not one or two games.”
It’s an interesting viewpoint and one that anecdotally is probably true, we are often guilty in this country of over-hyping young talent, and then similarly guilty of attempting to tear them down as quickly as we’ve built them up. Does that clamour to get players capped translate into the actual squad selections though?
A trawl through the stats shows that, since the end of the 2023 Rugby World Cup, Cymru have given capped debuts to 28 players. Of those only one has gone on to reach 20 caps and just six have made double figures. 14 are yet to start a test match having made their debuts off the bench, and 18 of them are on five caps or less.
Now there is some context there. The landscape of the Welsh national team saw a significant number of long-time stalwarts retire between 2019 and 2023, leaving little in the way of obvious replacements such had been their dominance of their respective positions, therefore coaches have had to rotate through a number of options.
Alongside that the coaches themselves have been switched up with Warren Gatland departing in February 2025, Matt Sherratt stepping in as an interim, and then Steve Tandy taking over the Head Coach role on a permanent basis, each with their own tactical and selection philosophies. You also have to factor in the usual injuries and unavailability.
However, it does seem to point to there being some element of truth in Anscombe’s overview of national team selection – that there are players being promoted too quickly to the national team, not being at the right level and then struggling to find consistency with their clubs on the back of that.
It doesn’t seem particularly helpful to name names in this piece as the overall point is not about them as individuals, it is about what getting selected to play for Cymru should mean and how ensuring players earning that honour can help return the side to the top of the international game. I’m sure you can think of a player or two who might fit the description above though.
With Tandy having now been in the job for a year, and with an eye on the Rugby World Cup next autumn, focus should switch to building consistency around squad selection and combinations within that, and subsequently challenging any players on the outside to string together a few months of strong performances, not just playing well across the opening three weeks of a season.
There’s mutual benefit across Welsh rugby there as players at the professional clubs can help their clubs win games more regularly and push for more meaningful fixtures at the business end of the year, and ultimately look to lift the overall strength in depth in the national team player pool so that every player at The Vale Resort during a test window knows they need to perform to keep their place.
This finally switches back to us as fans, and also to the media, to not overpromote players to test team contention off the back of a few good performances, and raise the bar for inclusion in Cymru contention to having had a full season of strong form.
We’re not going to get back to the top of the Six Nations or the latter stages of World Cups by throwing in young player after young player and hoping a few stick, there needs to be a medium-term view that recognises building the whole system up is required to be competitive again.
