Wales grand slam gives fresh heart to smaller nations

A second Welsh clean sweep in four years instilled fresh optimism among the smaller nations struggling in the professional era to compete with the greater resources and playing numbers of England, France and the Tri-Nations teams South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

"Given a small playing base to compete against other teams in the world, physically we have to be as good or a lot better than say the southern hemisphere teams," Wales coach Warren Gatland reflected at the official Six Nations launch last week.

"The advantage that France and England and the southern hemisphere teams have is just the number of players. We have got four teams."

Gatland was referring to the quartet of Welsh teams playing in the Magners league, which comprises 10 teams from Wales, Ireland and Scotland.

Wales are represented by the Ospreys and the Cardiff Blues, who have both qualified for the Heineken Cup quarter-finals, the Scarlets and the Newport Gwent Dragons.

The former New Zealand All Black then mentioned another frustration for European national coaches, namely the number of foreign players featuring in their leagues at the expense of home-grown talent.

"On any occasion, out of the 12 loose forwards of the four regions playing, eight of them can be foreigners so sometimes you've only got four Welsh players playing in a loose forward position for your region," Gatland said.

"So from that point it's quite difficult to develop world class players in every position."

Scotland coach Frank Hadden echoed Gatland's sentiments.

"The introduction of professional rugby has not necessarily been kind to countries with smaller resources," he said. "We've had to fight really hard to keep touch with the big boys of world rugby.

"It certainly gives me a lot of pleasure that I think, in some ways, we've narrowed the gap."

Cusiter returns

Hadden welcomed the decision of 2005 British and Irish Lion Chris Cusiter to sign a three-year deal with Glasgow, Scotland's second Magners league side along with Edinburgh. Cusiter has been playing for Catalan side Perpignan in the French league.

"What we try to do is get more of our players back into Scotland," he said.

"Obviously, that's expensive and we are not as financially well resourced as perhaps the other countries are but it is something we've got to try to do if we want to improve our quality of preparation.

"Both Scottish pro-teams have been getting good results recently and Glasgow have made their future intentions clear with some great performances, especially with the recent win over Toulouse."

Nick Mallett, Italy's South African-born coach, believes a strong club base is vital if the championship's latest recruits are ever to win the European title.

"I think it's absolutely crucial," he said. "All that happens in Italy is that a player who has the potential to be a top player is attracted by a French or an English club so 10 of my best players are playing over in Europe.

"That seems to the only route for a top Italian player to get top class rugby. You can't stop it."

Mallett greeted a decision by the Italian federation last December to put forward plans for either four Italian clubs or two amalgamated teams to play in the Magners league.

"I think Italy do have 15 players of decent quality who could make up two teams that could compete at the moment in the Magners league," he said.

"I don't think we'd win it, I don't think the guys would win many games, but I think that process has to start now for Italy to start stepping up and producing more players to compete for the national side."