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Players continue to be linked with moves away from Wales giving the ongoing uncertainty in the game
There was already a fair bit of consternation around the baker’s dozen of talent based outside of Wales in Steve Tandy’s first squad as head coach.
Heading into the autumn, the new Wales head coach ended up picking 12 English-based players for his first campaign, as well as Montpellier’s Adam Beard. The result? A difficult autumn made that bit more difficult when Wales had to face the back-to-back world champion Springboks without all 13 of those players, bound to head back to their clubs for the out-of-window finale.
You needn’t be reminded of the scoreline for that South Africa game, but it wasn’t pretty.
Hopefully, moving forward, the issues with player release from outside of Wales might be less of a pain for the national team’s coaches.
The shortened Six Nations format from next year means there’s one less fallow week where Wales are without their English-based players – something Matt Sherratt noted was a hindrance in this year’s tournament.
And the inaugural Nations Championship will also run within the Test windows next year.
That’s good news for Wales, given by next season, the number of frontline stars plying their trade somewhere else could have grown significantly.
As mentioned before, 13 of Tandy’s autumn squad – which ended up including 47 players at one point or another – currently play outside of Wales.
That number will already grow, with Wales’ two captains – Jac Morgan and Dewi Lake – having joined Gloucester this week from the Ospreys.
They are unlikely to be the last.
Fly-half Dan Edwards, despite having just seven caps to his name, is being linked with a move to Leicester Tigers, while Ospreys team-mates Kieran Hardy and Gareth Thomas have also been linked with English clubs – even if the latter is contracted beyond next summer.
Second-row James Fender, who was not capped by Wales in the autumn, is another who could feasibly move next summer – having come very close to a deal with Grenoble earlier this year.
Away from the Ospreys, Aaron Wainwright seems likely to leave the Dragons, while Rio Dyer could also bid farewell to Rodney Parade.
Cardiff might keep hold of Josh Adams after R360 was delayed, but a new deal for Taulupe Faletau seems less likely – given the 35-year-old has struggled with injuries in recent seasons.
Suddenly, you could see around 20 or so of the players used by Tandy this autumn based outside of Wales.
Looking at it in matchday squad terms, 16 of the matchday 23s that took on Argentina and Japan at the start of the autumn are either based outside of Wales or have been linked with moves away – just shy of 70 per cent of the squad.
Starting with that Argentina match, there are six of those players in the starting pack, three in the backline and a staggering seven out of the eight bench options.
To run through the names quickly, you have Rhys Carre, Lake, Dafydd Jenkins, Beard, Wainwright, Morgan, Tomos Williams, Edwards and Max Llewellyn starting, with Nicky Smith, Archie Griffin, Freddie Thomas, Olly Cracknell, Hardy, Jarrod Evans and Louis Rees-Zammit on the bench.
Were Tandy to name the same matchday 23 squad next season, then the only Welsh-based players could quite easily be Keiron Assiratti, Alex Mann, Adams, Ben Thomas, Tom Rogers, Blair Murray and Liam Belcher.
Against Japan, it was a similar story. Seven in the pack either already outside of Wales or linked with a move away, then four in the backline and five on the bench.
Against New Zealand, it was marginally less – with just 14 of the 23 falling into that category.
Perhaps what would be a greater concern is the cap difference between those possibly staying or going.
If you pool together the players either already based outside of Wales and those publicly linked with moves away from Tandy’s first campaign, you’d come away with a list of 22 players.
Now, this isn’t to say all of those 22 will actually end up outside of Wales, or remain part of Tandy’s plans going forward.
But, there’s a trend in terms of Test experience and the draw to English clubs.
Those 22 players have a combined total of 682 caps between them, averaging out at 31 caps per player.
As for the 25 other players called up by Tandy last month who have not been linked with a move away from Wales, they have just 230 caps between them.
That works out as 9.2 caps per player.
Beyond Adams, who has 65 caps now, none of that group has more than 20 caps.
Tandy continually spoke about the lack of caps in his squad, with the need to get his players up to speed at Test level obvious.
The continued loss of caps across the border doesn’t exactly bode well for national team or the clubs – whether that’s three or four – moving forward though.
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