Harri Ackerman has been named captain of Wales U20s for their Six Nations campaign by head coach Richard Whiffin. Dragons centre Ackerman will lead a 37-man squad as clubmate and flanker Ryan Woodman has been ruled out with a broken thumb.

An injury to George North – and therefore a big scare for Wales – was the price paid by Toby Booth’s Ospreys after they won for the first time on South African soil against one of the ‘big four’ provinces. The Swansea region bagged a home game in the Round of 16 in the EPCR Challenge Cup with a stunning 38-28 win over the Lions in Johannesburg.

Warren Gatland will receive reports on his long list of injured players on Monday before he finalises selection decisions for the Wales Six Nations squad. The head coach is due to announce his group for the tournament on Tuesday lunchtime, but has a raft of players he would like to pick currently unfit.

Ospreys head coach Toby Booth praised his players for wising up and winning a place in the last 16 of the European Challenge Cup. Full-back Iestyn Hopkins’ two tries helped the Ospreys to a 25-3 win over Perpignan to book a place in the knockout stages of the tournament.

He’s the Dragons highest try-scorer in Europe and only seven off Aled Brew’s regional record of 43, but Ashton Hewitt won’t be able to add to his tally of 36 tries in 125 games this season. Instead, the fleet-footed wing will have to wait for up to nine months before resuming his quest to become the first player at his region to score 50 tries.

Meet Jack Walsh: The rugby wanderer who is loving life in Wales and the BKT URC. From New South Wales to South Wales, via days in Devon, it’s been some rugby journey for the American-born Jack Walsh.

Home is still very much where the heart is when it comes to the regional derbies in the BKT United Rugby Championship. After nine of the 12 games played already this season, only three have ended up in away victories. At the start of last month the Scarlets won 29-23 at the Arms Park, while last weekend saw the Dragons pip Scarlets by a point at Rodney Parade and the Ospreys came from behind to beat Cardiff Rugby.

Toby Booth praised his “old school” Ospreys players after they beat Cardiff in a match that looked as if it was straight out of the 1980s. The Ospreys coach was full of praise for the character shown by his players as they marked New Year’s Day 2024 with a game-plan that could have come from 40 years ago.

New Year but same old pecking order for the Welsh regions? Coach and rugby analyst Tomas Marks examines the evidence from the Boxing Day derbies and looks for clues as to what might happen on New Year’s Day when the Ospreys host Cardiff and the Dragons welcome the Scarlets. Cardiff and the Ospreys were the resounding winners of the Boxing Day derbies with Cardiff blowing the Dragons away with ease within 40 minutes. The Ospreys survived a tough first half against the Scarlets but managed to score 25 points in the second half to win at Parc y Scarlets for the first time since 2015.

With only two wins in the BKT United Rugby Championship in the first half of the 2023-24 season, Scarlets head coach Dwayne Peel is hoping for a better start to 2024 when he takes his side to Rodney Parade for a New Year’s Day derby clash with fellow strugglers, the Dragons. The Dragons are currently propping up the table with only one win, at home against the Ospreys, to their credit.

Cardiff Rugby have gained local authority permission to increase the capacity of the Arms Park to around 12,000 for their URC Boxing Day derby against the Dragons. The demand for tickets has seen 10,000 sold already.

Shane Williams says the Scarlets will want to produce a big performance for their discontented fans in the west Wales Boxing Day derby – but he’s predicting an Ospreys victory. The Scarlets went down to a 23-7 defeat at home to Black Lion of Georgia in the EPCR Challenge Cup last weekend, leaving them with just two wins from their nine matches in all competitions this season.