LONG READ Dragons' shock Euro win over French giants a welcome tonic for Welsh game

Cardiff and Ospreys may have lost but both performed with spirit against better-resourced teams and could have made it into the final eight with more favourable officiating.

And the Dragons arrived in Paris with a cartload of true grit to defeat Stade Francais. The hosts started with only three of the team that began the 64-20 rout of Clermont Auvergne the previous weekend, but it isn’t compulsory for a French side to ring the changes when hosting a Welsh team. It was Stade’s call, and they got it wrong: badly wrong.

They are a side with resources the Dragons can only dream of. A quick internet search suggests they are among the top four wealthiest clubs in France, with an operating budget of 42.37 million euros. Never mind Artemis II – Stade might just have enough financial clout to fund their own trip to the moon if they so desired. The Dragons? Let’s politely assume their operating budget is in a different stratosphere altogether.

🗣️“I am just really pleased and amazed at the amount of support that came out… It was just spectacular so thank you everyone who came to support us…”

Carter hails travelling fans as Dragons win in Paris 💥

▶️https://t.co/oG6dc6qenL#WeAreGwentRugby pic.twitter.com/Kbycbxdw2u

— Dragons RFC 🐉 (@dragonsrfc) April 5, 2026

Unsurprisingly, the French were left bemoaning how their afternoon had panned out, with their fly-half Louis Foursans-Bourdette telling Midi Olympique: “It’s a huge disappointment. I even think what we did is almost shameful. We thought we had a group of 35-40 guys capable of wearing the jersey at events like this. In the end, we didn’t deliver.

“Frankly, I can’t believe we lost to the Dragons. No disrespect to them; we could have done better.” You wonder what Foursans-Bourdette would have said if he had chosen to disrespect Filo Tiatia’s side.

The truth is any away win in Europe is worth commending, and the Dragons deserve the kudos that has come their way. Their talisman was once again Aaron Wainwright, a player who is performing at such a level that even Roget’s might struggle to come up with enough superlatives to do justice to his efforts. There were 16 carries and 13 tackles from him at Stade Jean Bouin.  Whatever the company, he shows up well. Already, it is hard to imagine him being overhauled for the Welsh player of the year award.

The Dragons had a strong back-up cast, with Ben Carter and Ryan Woodman excelling in defence and at the lineouts, Thomas Young turning opposition ball over for fun and Angus O’Brien using his gun-barrel boot to secure territory. Throw in a decent scrummaging effort from the front row, plus impact from the bench, and the Welsh side had what it takes to get the job done and leave Foursans-Bourdette coming up with his customised version of zut alors. Sadly from a Welsh perspective, joy was not unconfined.

For those who have been holidaying on the far side of Neptune, a marginal call from the match officials proved decisive in the Ospreys’ encounter with Ulster in Belfast.

Kieran Hardy thought he had crossed for a try that would have put his team ahead with minutes left to play. The referee also initially seemed to think it was a score. Travelling fans were already working out who’d buy the first bottle of fizz when they arrived at the Errigle Inn on Ormeau Road.

So much for those plans. After the television match official, David Rose, got involved, English official Anthony Woodthorpe opted to disallow claims for a touchdown, ruling that Owen Watkin’s pass to Hardy had been forward, and the Welsh club were on their way out.

Was the correct decision made? Different views abounded. But when Ulster legend Stephen Ferris described the ruling as ‘very harsh’ on the Ospreys you could understand why the Welsh team’s supporters were less than impressed with the way matters had panned out.

“These guys are running at nearly 10 metres per second,” said Ferris on TNT. “The physics of it can look like it’s going forward but it’s not actually a forward pass. It didn’t look like it came out of the hands forward.”

Old Flashy Flicker, one of our science teachers in school and a man who seemed to know the theory of velocity better than he knew the names of some of his students, would doubtless have concurred. Clearly and obviously forward the pass most certainly wasn’t. And can we agree that the benefit of the doubt in a potentially 50-50 call should go to the attacking side? No, thought not. Still, from many miles away you could understand the Ospreys’ pain.

They could console themselves that they had come within a hotly debated decision of overcoming a fully-loaded Ulster team capable of beating most when blessed with home advantage.

Hardy looked as if he had been charged to the limit with electricity, so quick and alert was he in everything he did, while the Welsh team’s starting scrum-half Reuben Morgan-Williams kept Ulster’s defence honest with his eye for the gap and eagerness to break.

Wings Luke Morgan and Daniel Kasende ran with speed and conviction, and up front Australian lock Ryan Smith again excelled along with Jac Morgan – 24 tackles – and Morgan Morris with 19 carries.

However impressive the Ospreys’ back row looks, they always seem more impressive when Morris starts. As unsung as Prince Phillip having a crack at Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘Relax’ back in the day, the Swansea-born player defies his lack of recognition with consistently strong displays. You don’t need to be secretary of the Morgan Morris Fan Club to feel someone in the Wales set-up should take another look.

The centres, Keiran Williams and Owen Watkin, also deserve mention. Nor should we overlook the contributions off the bench from the likes of Harri Deaves and Iestyn Hopkins.

Considering the disparity in resources, with the Ospreys operating under severe financial constraints, the Welsh team’s effort was commendable. But plaudits in defeat would have been small consolation for Mark Jones’s side

Cardiff’s European hopes were buried beneath a mass of bodies in Treviso. The capital city region had shown much character to rally against Benetton after trailing 33-14 at one stage. They had cut the deficit to just three points with minutes to play and felt Evan Lloyd had forced his way over after a series of forward drives.

Skipper Ben Thomas appealed to referee Kevin Bralley to review footage of the incident, but his pleas were rejected. It was hard to tell conclusively whether Lloyd had grounded the ball, but would it have hurt to have gone upstairs to see if there was evidence to the contrary? It seemed the very least an injury-hit Cardiff deserved.

They had their standouts. The No. 8 Alun Lawrence, for instance, appears intent on redefining the concept of graft, so industrious is he every time he takes the field. He was at it again in northern Italy, posting gargantuan carrying and tackling figures. Jacob Beetham and Dan Thomas led the support, while some of Ben Thomas’s passes were so sweet they might have been sprinkled with sugar.

Not a bad collective effort from the Welsh teams, then, with signs of improvement from the Dragons especially. You were left wondering, again, about what a dash of extra central funding could do for the fortunes of all. Right now, they are operating on an uneven playing field virtually every weekend, with it being no small achievement that they manage to be competitive.

For some, of course, the answer is to lose a region. But others fear, and maybe not without good reason, that heading in that direction would narrow pathways and lead to toxicity for a generation or longer.

Ultimately, the call is down to the Welsh Rugby Union, who favour a reduction in the number of professional teams as part of a shake-up for the game in Wales. But they seem to have some way to go to win the argument in the court of public opinion. What most would agree is that the sooner these matters are resolved the better.

A week ago in his local corner shop this writer heard a man asking a highly respected former player for his views on the game in Wales. “I don’t really follow rugby any more,” came the reply. “I’m more interested in football.”

Was it Welsh rugby politics that proved a turn-off? Or the standard of play? Or the downgrading of the club scene in favour of regions? Alas, with people queuing at the counter, with their bread, newspapers, bottles of Pinot Grigio and notes in hand for lottery tickets, those questions went unasked as the ex-player and his interlocutor left the store. But from an oval-ball perspective, the vignette was a shade concerning.

Anyway, the Dragons are left carrying Welsh hopes in Europe, a turn of events that wouldn’t have been on every bingo card when the season started. They may be on the far side of nowhere in the URC but their supporters are detecting progress in the way the team plays and a Challenge Cup quarter-final against Zebre, albeit in Italy, offers Tiatia’s men a decent chance of sticking around in the competition.

Head coach Tiatia is already being feted for his efforts at the Newport-based region. Most will surely wish his team well for the rest of their European campaign.