Gavan Casey

IMAGINE THE FRENZY on Friday morning as a Welsh Rugby Union communications intern made like a competitor in an egg-and-spoon race, hurrying through the back corridors of the Principality Stadium with their iPhone cocked and their eyes a picture of dread.

“What is it?!’ asks WRU president Terry Cobner as the intern bursts through his office door.

“Sir, it’s the Georgians…’ replies the breathless intern. “The Georgians have called us out!”

And sure enough, staring back at Cobner from the intern’s phone would be the following statement released by his Georgian Rugby Union equivalent Ioseb Tkemaladze:

It’s my great pleasure to invite our dear friends from Wales to play Georgia in Tbilisi this autumn. After a thrilling Six Nations and Georgia’s seventh success in a row in the Rugby Europe Championship, it’s the fixture rugby fans everywhere are crying out for so I really hope the Welsh can take up our invitation. Of course we’d be equally happy to play them in Cardiff – where we won a famous victory in 2022.

Only by parachuting Exeter Chief Nika Abuladze into Cardiff city centre to tell passers-by that the Gallagher Premiership doesn’t give a tuppenny you-know-what about the regions could Georgia have funted Welsh rugby harder while it’s down.

An established boxer called out on social media by a hungry up-and-comer in a similar manner would play it cool, either by ignoring it altogether or by verbally accepting the challenge on the provision that ‘the money is right’.

The WRU didn’t have the luxury of the former: it would be frankly weird to blank a direct, public call-out by a rival union — not least one which had thumbs tapping like mad across the rugby world. Hilariously, they had to be seen to say something.

And so came the response well over an hour later: “We’ll be in touch…”

That Wales are yet to confirm their November tests begged the question as to whether this might actually have been an ingenious marketing collaboration for a fixture that has long been pencilled in behind the scenes.

If that is the case, hats off to both parties — but the Welsh union have famously shown little in recent years to deserve the benefit of that doubt.

Indeed, the loss of gate revenue from a home-test slot in November would be so obviously damaging to the WRU’s finances that Georgia’s Tbilisi invitation feels calculated; Wales’ probable inability to travel can be framed by the Georgians as a sign of fear, and a prospective Cardiff meeting contextualised as a concession made by Wales for competitive reasons rather than out of financial necessity.

Back in reality, meanwhile, if you were a Welsh player whose arse was recently reddened by the Wooden Spoon, you’d nearly pay your own way to Tbilisi just for the chance to put the Georgians back in their box.

The response from Wales supporters to Georgia’s incitement has packed a punch: many have been quick to stress that When It Really Mattered, at the 2023 Rugby World Cup, Wales wrought vengeance on the side that had humiliated them in Cardiff the previous year.

It’s a gratifying retort from a Welsh perspective but it masks some important context: that final World Cup pool game wound up meaning far less to Georgia than their November 2022 test at the Principality Stadium; by the time they met Wales seven months ago, The Lelos had already been knocked out of the World Cup having banged their heads on the ceiling. Head coach Levan Maisashvili called time on his excellent four-year reign just days later.

Both sides’ fortunes have since looped back towards an intersection. A day after Wales’ soul-destroying defeat to Italy at the Principality, a regenerated Georgia — now coached by Richard Cockerill — destroyed World Cup darlings Portugal in Paris to claim their seventh Rugby Europe Championship title on the spin.

Their six front rows — whose average age, despite the inclusion of the 32-year-old Toulon tighthead Beka Gigashvili on the bench, was 24 — pulverised the Portuguese scrum.

Exciting backs Davit Niniashvili (21), Luka Matkava (22), Mikheil Alania (23) and Akaki Tabutsadze (26) looked after the rest.

Georgia led 36-3 before Rodrigo Marta crossed for a consolation score for Portugal in the dying seconds. Neither side even vaguely resembled those which proved inseparable in their own World Cup Pool C meeting.

Everything about Georgia’s trajectory under Cockerill would suggest that it will once more be the Eastern Europeans, and not Portugal, who will emblematise the case for either expanding the Six Nations or introducing a promotion/relegation play-off between Europe’s top two tiers.

The frightening thing for Wales is that it is now they, and not Italy, who are equally emblematic of the same argument.

Welsh supporters will see that as unjust: last weekend’s home defeat to the Italians condemned them to what was only their first Wooden Spoon in 21 years; Italy have suffered the same fate 15 times in the intervening two decades.

But the plain facts are that Italy are now a significantly better team than Wales, and Italian rugby’s pathways are now churning out better players than their Welsh equivalent (Wales U20s’ comeback victory over the Azzurri at Cardiff Arms Park last Friday was impressive, but that it was seen as a legitimate upset tells its own story).

In reality, Wales will never be relegated from the Six Nations. Welsh rugby is by no means too big to fail — but it’s too big, and too important to the sport’s delicate ecosystem, for its national team to be allowed to fail to that extent.

But the longer Wales remain this vulnerable, the lippier Georgia will become about having a seat pulled out for them at the big boys’ table — and quite rightly.

Of course, Wales could loosen a few screws in that chair as soon as this November should the WRU fulfil its vow on Friday to contact its Georgian equivalent for bout negotiations.

But it’s a sign of Wales’ disrepair that an autumn test with Georgia would feel both so reputationally risky and so bloody exciting to the rest of the rugby-watching world.