Respected broadcaster Eddie Butler has called on Wales to withdraw from the United Rugby Championship following the country’s poor performances in 2022.

None of Wales’ four regional teams made it into the top eight of the URC, missing out on the playoffs, while only the Ospreys will be part of the European Champions Cup next season.

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The poor performances have been felt by the national team as well, with Wales only winning one of their Six Nations matches this year and suffering a historic loss to Italy in the final round of the tournament.

Sharing his views with The Rugby Paper Podcast, Butler, who commentates on URC matches in Wales for Premier Sports, suggested a radical overhaul of the country’s professional rugby structures.

“It’s a real problem. The creation of the regions was a short-term fix for a long-term financial problem. But you have to recognise at some stage that the fix doesn’t work.

“On the other hand, we’ve got two standalone regions – Llanelli, the Scarlets and Cardiff, formerly known as the Blues. They are still basically standalone clubs and they can’t cut it. What’s more, they can’t deliver a crowd and that’s the huge thing, if you don’t have a sense of theatre.

“I think we’ve got to be even more radical than that. I just think we ought to rip up the regional model and go back to having the clubs.

“We’ve reached that point now where we’ve got to think smaller, export big. If our system isn’t good enough for fully fledged professionals then we have to be able to release them to go and ply their trade elsewhere.

“Then we just enjoy what Welsh rugby is for the time being. It’s vibrant, it’s inventive, it’s creative. We’re so mired in gloom at the moment that we’ve forgotten what it is to have fun. It’s so obvious at the moment that footballers are having fun and the Welsh [rugby] players are not playing with much of a smile on their face.”

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