The Welsh Rugby Union is exploring the option of entering a semi-professional Super Rygbi Cymru side into the Vodacom URC.
This comes as the WRU pushes ahead with plans to cut its professional teams – the Dragons, Cardiff, Scarlets and Ospreys – from four to three.
However, the WRU is contractually obliged to provide four teams to the competition, and the URC is understood to be strongly opposed to running a league with an odd number of sides.
That has forced Welsh rugby bosses to consider a temporary – and controversial – solution: promoting an SRC team into the URC to fill the gap.
The current SRC is made up of 10 club sides, including Ebbw Vale, Llandovery, RGC, Newport, Cardiff RFC, Swansea and Bridgend.
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“We are looking at all options, and that [an SRC club] is something on the table, just as retaining one of the existing ones is on the table,” WRU performance director Huw Collier-Keywood told WalesOnline.
“It’s a rolling contract [with the URC] so we are committed into the future for having four teams. We are also committed up to 2028 that none of our best teams can play in any other competition.
“Those are the two obligations.”
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