Wales rugby coach Wayne Pivac not allowed to pick Rhys Priestland for Six Nations as WRU refuse exemption for Bath star
WALES were blocked from picking Rhys Priestland for the Six Nations because of the controversial ‘Gatland law’.
The Bath fly-half has 50 caps for his country, but because he plays outside of Wales, he has to have played 10 times more to be eligible for selection.
The rule came about during Warren Gatland’s tenure to stop The Dragons losing all their top talent abroad.
So any player who leaves Wales, or signs a contract outside of the country after being capped, has to have 60 caps to their name to continue to be picked.
And 34-year-old Priestland, who is set to join Cardiff Blues at the end of the season, is the latest star to fall short of the selection criteria and will miss the Six Nations.
Priestland could also be called back for Premiership games during the tournament fallow weeks – unlike the Wales-based players who are all centrally contracted to the WRU.
Boss Wyane Pivac was keen to test the ruling to see if – because of their injury crisis and the pandemic – Cardiff chiefs would let him.
But the Kiwi said: “In terms of Priestland, we have asked the question along the lines of the Rhys Webb question when that was done at the time.
“We have injuries. In Rhys Patchell, who is coming back from a well-documented head knock and is now in a reconditioning programme, he has been out of the game for a while.
“And obviously, Gareth Anscombe is still out. So for us, it’s about can we select Rhys if we need to call upon him. And that question has been asked.
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“And so we have selected what we have on the basis that they are available. So we now know whether or not we can use Rhys should we get a further injury – and no, we can’t.”
On the chances of Premiership players coming and going out of camp to play club games, Pivac admitted: “We don’t want players coming and going.
“We would like any players that we pick from outside to be here full-time, if we could. We’re just waiting for an answer on that.
“It’s an ongoing discussion, it’s very topical and one everyone is looking for some clarification over and I believe we will get that.
‘IT WOULD BE SENSIBLE’
“I believe it would be sensible for everyone in the current climate that we don’t, and we certainly don’t want to have players coming and going because in the community at the moment the new variant is transferred very quickly.
“So we certainly would like it if we can to have any players selected based outside of Wales to have them full-time.
“We had 700-odd [Covid] tests through the autumn, all coming back negative.
“So we think we did a pretty good job in relation to Covid in making sure we gave ourselves every opportunity to have everybody available, not only in the playing group but also the management group.
“This time around we will be carrying out an extra layer of testing, so twice a week rather than once, and we will be staying in a bubble a lot longer than previously.”