With Wales due to name their squad for the Six Nations next week, Robin Davey puts on his paramedic’s outfit and examines who’s game and who’s lame as the regions go back into European competition this weekend. The regions head back into Europe with little hope of real success after four pool matches, but the man praying for good news of a different kind will be Wales coach Warren Gatland. The Wales coach – for the very last time – is due to name his squad for the Six Nations tournament next week, with the first game against France little more than three weeks away.

Luke Rowe insists there is more to come at the Classics as the Welshman takes aim at a fresh cobbles campaign in 2019. The Cardiff-born rider has top-10 finishes at both Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders to his name as well as a podium appearance at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne.

Caroline Matthews and Lee Coulson have been appointed Head Coaches as Wales Wheelchair Basketball begins a bid to compete at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Mathews will lead the men’s and Coulson the women’s as the 3×3 teams look to be represented in Birmingham in three years time.

Coleg Y Cymoedd director of rugby Lee Davies has admitted even he had given up on his side retaining their Welsh Schools & Colleges league title. Davies saw his team fall nine points behind Coleg Sir Gar in Tuesday night’s final at Sardis Road before Lloyd Wilkins came off the replacements bench to turn the game around as Cymoedd hit back to win 28-19. “With 10 minutes to go I was a bit worried and I didn’t think we would do it,” conceded Davies.

Swansea City Ladies star Jess Williams is close to fitness after recovering from a serious knee injury. The Wales U19 defender has not played this season after fracturing her right knee joint last summer. It has been a long road back, but Williams is now within weeks of a return to action and said: “To step up my rehab feels great, as being injured is never easy and every day I’m one step closer to being back on the pitch.

Nine Welsh athletes feature in the top three in the just published 51st UK merit rankings for 2018, compiled by the leading track and field statistician Peter Matthews.  Discus star Brett Morse and Commonwealth Games 20k walk bronze medallist Bethan Davies head their events as Britain’s best with Davies repeating her success of 2017.  Remarkably, Morse tops the list for the seventh time. 

Wales international fly-half Rhys Priestland could be a target for the Dragons after confirming he will leave Bath at the end of the season. Priestland has not been offered new terms by the Gallagher Premiership club following four years spent across the border. The Dragons have re-signed Jason Tovey from Cross Keys, but only until the end of the season and with Gavin Henson – who turns 37 next month – unlikely to be at Rodney Parade for the next campaign, the region will be short of experience at No.10.

Runaway Championship leaders Pontypool will get the chance to avenge their 2017 WRU National Cup defeat at Pandy Park when they travel to Cross Keys for this season’s second round on the weekend of  January 26. The 1983 Cup winners were given a walk-over in the first round last weekend by Neath, but will now get the chance to test themselves against Premiership opposition when they meet Keys in an all-Gwent derby. When they met two seasons ago it was the home side who came out on top 19-3 in a mud bath.

Tyreeq Bakinson, one of the heroes of Newport County’s famous FA Cup win over Leicester City last weekend, has agreed a loan extension until the end of the season.

So when is a late tackle, not a dangerous or intentional late tackle? When it lays out a player in front of the referee and forces him to miss three months of rugby, obviously. New Zealand referee Ben O’Keeffe, Irish TMO Simon McDowell and Kiwi Citing Commissioner Keith Brown should be hanging their heads in shame at the news from the Scarlets today that Leigh Halfpenny is likely to be out of action for another month or more due to the concussion he suffered on 10 November against Australia. O’Keeffe and McDowell decided that Wallaby wing Samu Kerevi’s contact in the 74th minute with the Welsh full back was merely a ‘rugby incident’.

Welsh decathlon record holder Ben Gregory has earned himself a British vest on home soil have qualified to face France, the Czech Republic, Spain and Poland in the Indoor Combined Events International Match in Cardiff on January 26-27. Gregory took the bronze medal at last weekend’s England Indoor Heptathlon Championships, his first medal at the event since 2015, to secure his place in a team alongside John Lane, who won the title in Sheffield, and Scotland’s Andrew Murphy, who won silver. Howard Bell makes up the senior British quartet for the event at NIAC, Cyncoed.

Welsh striker Christian Doidge has been backed to fire Forest Green Rovers to promotion following the collapse of his £1m move to Bolton Wanderers. Doidge is back at League Two Rovers after his loan spell at Bolton ended in acrimony, accusation, unpaid wages and a transfer ban than combined to preclude his four-month loan deal becoming a permanent switch. The Cwmbran player – and former Carmarthen Town favourite – was due to complete his move to Bolton on January 3, but the club’s financial problems meant they were unable to fulfil their commitment and the 26-year-old has gone back to Rovers.

Three time Welsh National Tarmacadam Rally Champion Richard Merriman is considering a move up to the Protyre Motorsport UK Asphalt Rally Championship this year, after a highly successful season in 2018 in which he remained unbeaten in the two-litre category in his Vauxhall-engined Darrian T90. The Pontypridd driver won his class nine times on the nine rallies he finished last year, and always finished inside the top 10 overall as well. The highlight of a brilliant season was his overall victory on the Toyota Harlech Stages Rally at Llanbedr Airfield in Gwynedd, which was Merriman’s first outright win in the new car.

Lee Tomlin has completed his loan move from Cardiff City to join League One Peterborough United for the rest of the season. The 29-year-old made just 16 appearances for the Bluebirds since joining in July 2017 from Bristol City.

Josh Adams is just one of a number of Welsh internationals who have graduated from the Welsh Schools & Colleges Cup final winning teams to play for Wales and all eyes will be on the ‘Class of 2019’ tonight at Sardis Road when two familiar foes do battle once again for one of the top Under 18 titles in the country. Reigning champions Coleg Y Cymoedd will be hoping to make it four wins in a row over arch-rivals Coleg Sir Gar in the game, which will be televised on the S4C Facebook book page Chwaraeron (kick-off 7.30pm), but both coaches admit the game is too close to call. Adams was in the 2013 Sir Gar team that won the title at the Principality Stadium and is one of two full Welsh internationals from the squad that day along with Ryan Elias. Other players, such as Will Boyde, Tom Phillips, Dan Jones and Kieran Hardy, are all in the Sacrlets squad.

Cardiff athlete Charlotte Arter has spoken of her delight at setting a new parkrun world best time in her home city on Saturday. The 27-year-old Wales and Great Britain international stormed around the 5km Bute Park course in just 15:50. Arter’s time is the fastest clocked by a woman at any parkrun event staged in 23 countries across five continents since the global running phenomenon launched in London more than 10 years ago.

Mike Flynn is relishing a Newport old boys’ reunion in the FA Cup after his County giant-killers drew a fourth round trip to Tony Pulis’s Middlesbrough. Flynn – whose team knocked Leicester City out of the competition on Sunday – was hoping for another home tie or a second crack at a Premier League club. In the end, he drew neither. But a trip to one of the biggest clubs in the Championship and a chance to lock horns with one of his managerial heroes still has a certain romance.

Former Aberavon and Ospreys wing Jay Baker came back to haunt his old Wizards team-mates for Merthyr in the first round of the WRU National Cup. Baker created second-half tries for Lewis Williams and Matthew Jarvis to send holders Merthyr into the next round – 15-10 – and keep them on course for a double-double. Baker made two searing breaks to pave the way for the visitors’ tries in a game that saw his side reduced to 13 men after the break. Aberavon pushed hard for the victory, but didn’t quite have enough to emulate their famous league win over the Ironmen at The Wern earlier in the season.

Padraig Amond has studied his penalty winner against Leicester City – time and time again! The Irishman from Carlow admits he watched video replays of the spot-kick which sent Newport County through to the Emirates FA Cup fourth round time and again. “I watched match of the day and then the whole game again,” said […]

Dublin-born teenager Caoimhin Fowler is making an impact with Cardiff City. Fowler, a 19-year-old known as ‘Quivi’ to team-mates, played for Wolves, Dutch clubs Vitesse Arnhem and Dordrecht plus Leichhardt FC in Cairns and Wollongong before the family left Australia and he committed to the young Bluebirds. He scored a magnificent goal for City at […]