LONG READ The good, the bad and the unreal – highs and lows of the 2025-26 season in Wales

For Welsh rugby, it’s been a season as bumpy as a tumble down Cooper’s Hill on cheese-rolling day. For the avoidance of doubt, that’s quite a lot of knocks, thumps, blows, bashes and impacts, not always inducing smiles from those involved.

You wonder what’s going through the minds of all concerned. And you might be a shade mystified at what the cheese chasers are thinking, as well.

What a campaign it’s been west of the River Severn. A season where Wales have suffered record beatings on the field and Welsh rugby has been plunged into levels of acrimony off the field that might make the Borgias of many campaigns ago seem like a happy bunch.

The Welsh Rugby Union are insistent they have a plan to take the game forward, but their grand design has at its heart a proposal to cut a region, something that was never going to please all in Welsh rugby, or even many, for that matter.

Far from sailing through, the blueprint has hit difficulties and encountered, ahem, mixed reviews. Of late, there has been a dot of relief for the regions most at risk, with the prospect of a reprieve at least until 2028, but beyond that nothing is guaranteed.

Meantime, the professional sides have tried hard to make a decent fist of operating with budgets that some of their European rivals might view as small change.

Wales? A decade or so ago, a magazine asked its readers if they would contemplate taking a pill that wiped away bad memories. Not everyone was up for the idea. However, if the same question were posed in relation to the Welsh national team in 2025-26, it would be no surprise if disorderly queues started to form sooner rather than later.

But it would be wrong to suggest there haven’t been any uplifting moments amid the woe; there have been, albeit not many. Anyway, here are some of the highs and lows of the Welsh campaign over the past nine months.

Best team

The Ospreys won the Welsh Shield despite having to contend with adversity that threatened to be positively existential at times. (Worryingly for all at the Swansea-based region, it could still pan out that way, albeit for now, that can has been kicked down the road) But, for now, let’s commend the spirit shown by a team playing out of a temporary home in Bridgend in 2025-26 and facing a world of concerns off the pitch. In most of their games, Mark Jones’s team brought a cart-load of true grit onto the field, and in the derby matches in particular, they were frequently bang at it, winning four and drawing one of their six games against regional rivals.

But the best Welsh side this season has been Cardiff. The Arms Park frequently crackled with atmosphere and Corniel van Zyl’s team won 10 of their 11 home games, proving harder to beat than a royal flush. Their victims included Stormers and Leinster in the league and Ulster and Racing 92 in Europe. In the URC, they sealed a place in the play-offs for the first time and will also play in the Champions Cup next season.

Cardiff had top-performing players in Dan Thomas, Ben Thomas and Tom Bowen and achieved their success despite the loss of head coach Matt Sherratt to Wales on the eve of the season. Of course, a coaching group is about more than one man, but still, seeing the pilot head off while the plane is on the runway and cabin crew are running through safety checks couldn’t have been easy. Credit Van Zyl, Gethin Jenkins, Jonny Goodridge and Scott Andrews for doing such a fine job, then.

Top player

Look no further than Aaron Wainwright, a beacon of excellence for the Dragons and Wales pretty much every time he took the field. You don’t have to turn back the clock too far to find the number eight stuck in a run of just two wins from 38 matches for club and country. Lesser individuals would have let their heads drop. But Waino, as the man from Newport is widely known, is made of sterner stuff.

This season the Dragons’ upturn of sorts has been down in no small way to the talismanic figure with the headband in the middle of their back row. For Wales, too, his performances were often clean off the graph of excellence, notably against Italy in his country’s only win of the Six Nations campaign.

Next term he will be plying his trade in England with Leicester Tigers. Nostradamus isn’t needed to predict he’ll rapidly prove a favourite with the Welford Road faithful.

Most memorable try

A clear winner here, and indeed a clear winner when it came to sorting out the Six Nations try of the championship. Rhys Carré’s unreal effort against Ireland in Dublin was backed by 43 per cent of those who voted in an official tournament poll, with Leonardo Marin, Louis Bielle-Biarrey and Darcy Graham having to be content with minor places.

Presumably, Bielle-Biarrey would have signed off Carré’s finish at the Aviva Stadium, featuring as it did a carry from outside the opposition 22, a show-and-go, a swatting away of home wing Robert Baloucoune and a hitherto quietly concealed turn of pace, all from a 21-stone (133kg) prop. “A Dragon-jewelled try from the prop forward,” a TV commentator enthused. Indeed, it was.

Worst performance

A crowded field, this one. There’s SS Ospreys sinking without trace against Leinster on the final day of the regular campaign, the Scarlets’ falling to a 34-0 home defeat by the Stormers early in the campaign and the Dragons shipping 74 points against Benetton.

Or we could home in on Wales’ 73-0 thrashing by South Africa in November, or even the 54 points they leaked against France in the Six Nations. But Steve Tandy’ team were under-strength for the game with the Springboks, while France were playing not so much at a different level as on a different planet when they took Tandy’s team apart in February.

Instead, let’s view the 48-7 hiding from England at Twickenham as the nadir of the season (while accepting that many will opt for one of those others). The men in white led 29-0 at the break and barely moved out of third gear in the second half yet still overwhelmed the visitors.

It said much that England didn’t win another game in the championship. Wales’ ineptitude had flattered them. “We didn’t fire a shot,” lamented former scrum-half Richie Rees later. “We did not put our imprint on the game and that is what they will be frustrated about.”

No arguments there.

Unsung player

That would be Cardiff flanker Dan Thomas, a man who might just be as unsung as a rendition of ‘Get It Down, You Zulu Warrior’ at a Sunday morning gathering of the Temperance Society. Most tackles in the entire URC, second most turnovers, fully fledged nuisance to every opposing team he has faced, yet rarely touted for a Wales squad call-up: that’s the openside from Carmarthenshire.

The queue of outstanding No 7s available to Steve Tandy doesn’t help Thomas’s cause, of course, but he has been superb for Cardiff this season, a player who uses his know-how expertly to snaffle ball at breakdowns and pop up to put in key defensive interventions.

A nod as well to James Ratti at the Ospreys, another player who has had a fine season without getting the representative rewards he deserves.

Biggest disappointment

There were quiet hopes for an upturn for Wales Women when Sean Lynn took over as head coach in January of last year. The former Gloucester-Hartpury team boss was highly regarded and, indeed, still is by many who have followed his career.

But his gig with the Welsh women is proving a tough one. A Six Nations whitewash – five games, five defeats – tells a grim story and Wales have won just one out of 15 matches on Lynn’s watch. Improved defence against France and four tries against England were to be commended, but, ultimately, Lynn’s charges need to start winning and put a soul-sapping spell behind them.

What time do you want the match to start?

The Guardian asked Max Boyce a while back if he could simply ring up the WRU these days and request as many tickets as he wanted for a Wales international. “I tried once. They said six Max Boyces had already phoned,” the bard of Glynneath quipped back.

We’ll have to assume that wasn’t the case for the game with France in February, played in front of just 57,744 supporters, the lowest Wales crowd for a Six Nations game.

However you slice it, 15,000 or so empty seats for a Wales home match in the championship is not a great look.  Nor is it great for the WRU’s coffers, with some attributing the mass stayaway to the turmoil in Welsh rugby.

Those who weren’t there missed some of the finest rugby, albeit from France, who played as well as pretty much any visiting side has played in Cardiff.

Best signing

Ospreys supporters have spent much of the campaign hailing the impact of Australian lock Ryan Smith, a player who has cushioned the loss of Adam Beard to Montpellier. Smith’s performances at the heart of the south-west Wales region’s pack have been consistently strong.

But maybe Fletcher Anderson at the Scarlets deserves to walk off with this particular plaudit. The number eight has been a revelation with his carrying, tackling and leadership and is one of the reasons why the west Walians can be hopeful about the future.

Hope for next season

Is it too much to ask for a lasting peace to break out in Welsh rugby? Okay, let’s re-phrase that one. Is it too much for key figures to come together, offer a nod to Welsh rugby’s traditions and plot a way forward that supporters and coaches throughout Wales can get behind? With good sense and a dot of humility, it shouldn’t be. Here’s hoping for a better year next time.