Tonga back row forward Solomone Funaki has been backed by Dragons coach Dai Flanagan to make a big impact at Rodney Parade next season. The 30-year-old – who can operate across the back row – will make the move to Newport this summer from Moana Pasifika in Super Rugby.

It’s been a difficult Women’s Six Nations for Wales captain Hannah Jones and her squad with four losses, one victory and a wooden spoon. But they did salvage pride against the backdrop of their biggest ever home crowd at the Principality Stadium. Over 10,00- supporters spurred the team on to victory in the final five minutes against a very competent Italian team.

The build up for Cardiff’s final home game against Edinburgh began before they had left the pitch at Kingspan Stadium last weekend after a sickening defeat to Ulster. Head coach Matt Sherratt wanted his players to transfer the feeling of bitter disappointment at the end of their 19-17 defeat into the Arms Park clash with the Scottish capital side in a bid to capture that elusive first win of the year.

The Ospreys will be looking to maintain their perfect record against South African opposition when they take the field at Pretoria’s Loftus Versfeld on Saturday. So far this season, they have beaten the Emirates Lions in both the URC and EPCR Challenge Cup, while there have also been league wins against the Hollywoodbets Sharks and, just last weekend, the DHL Stormers.

Wales will break their attendance record for a stand-alone home Test match, when they face Italy in the Women’s Guinness Six Nations on Saturday at the Principality Stadium. Ioan Cunningham’s side may be facing the prospect of a wooden spoon, but the surge in interest in the women’s game shows no signs of slowing.

Theo Cabango feels he has returned from injury in even better shape than before and that was certainly how things looked on his first start in more than five months. Back from a lengthy lay-off following a shoulder dislocation, the 22-year-old Cardiff wing scored two scintillating tries in last weekend’s dramatic United Rugby Championship clash with Ulster in Belfast. It looked as though he had completed a hat-trick when he raced over two minutes from time, only for the score to be ruled out for an offence in the build-up, enabling Ulster scrum-half John Cooney to land a match-winning penalty.

It doesn’t need a long, hard stare at the United Rugby Championship table to realise it has not been a vintage season for the Scarlets. The most recent Welsh winners of the tournament seven years ago have won just three matches and stand 14th in the 16-team table. On Friday night, the Scarlets are at home to the Sharks, who are also having a season to forget and have won the same meagre number as their hosts.

There will be a very special father and son reunion in the United Rugby Championship this weekend as John and Taine Plumtree find themselves in opposing camps. If things had worked out differently, they could have been together at the Hollywoodbets Sharks as coach John was keen to bring his boy over to Durban from New Zealand. But Taine, who was born in Swansea while his dad was coaching there, opted to go down the Wales route, joining the Scarlets from the Blues Super Rugby side.

When Toby Booth was once asked if he felt pressure as a regional rugby coach in Wales, he responded: “Pressure? Pressure’s for tyres! “What I have is a fantastic opportunity.” These days Booth is fully pumped and primed as the biggest – some might say the only – success story in the Welsh game.

Ellis Jenkins is determined to bow out with one more match at Cardiff Arms Park before he brings down the curtain on an illustrious career. The Wales international has confirmed he will retire at the end of the season after worsening knee problems.

Ioan Cunningham has claimed Wales can avoid a Six Nations wooden spoon by beating Italy – even though his team have done little this season to spread that faith. The Wales coach insists his team can turn things around in their final match of the Women’s Guinness Six Nations, despite another huge defeat in the fourth round of matches, Wales’ seventh in succession.

The French are coming and it is going to take an almighty effort from Ioan Cunningham’s Welsh side to stop them from making it four wins out of four in the Guinness Women’s Six Nations on Sunday. Les Bleues are hoping to stay on course for a Grand Slam showdown with England next week and came into Round 4 one point behind the reigning champions, who beat Ireland 88-10 in front of a crowd of 48,778 at Twickenham on Saturday. Wales have struggled to date in this year’s championship after finishing third last season. Now the goal is to end on a high with back-to-back home games against France and Italy, both in the Welsh capital.

Toby Booth believes the victory his Ospreys team earned on South African soil this weekend will earn them what they have craved this season – their opponents’ respect. For the Swansea region, the big goal has been to improve their reputation and regard and they will certainly have done just that with their stunning 27-21 bonus point victory over the DHL Stormers in Cape Town. It goes down as one of the finest results in the Welsh region’s 20-year history, given the Stormers have been BKT URC finalists for the past two years and considering how hard they are to beat in their own back yard.

You have to go back eight games to 2016 for the last time Wales managed to beat France in Guinness Women’s Six Nations. That famous 10-8 victory came courtesy of tries from Dyddgu Hywel and Megan York at The Gnoll, in Neath, and steered Rachel Taylor’s side to a fourth place finish in that year’s championship.

Neath have reacted badly to being beaten by Cardiff to the remaining place in the planned new 10-team Elite Domestic Competition – appearing to suggest the Welsh Rugby Union came to a biased judgement. The decision by the WRU to add Cardiff to the list has brought an end to a long, and sometimes farcical process that looked like musical chairs.

The player Cardiff Rugby coach Matt Sherratt described as a Rolls Royce will go through the gears for the first time in six months on Friday night. Taulupe Faletau – who broke his arm playing for Wales at the World Cup – will make his comeback in the capital city region’s United Rugby Championship match against Ulster in Belfast.

It took Gwennan Hopkins a mere five minutes to make her mark in international rugby. Not many teenagers score on their Test debut, but that’s exactly what the 19-year-old Hopkins did in Cork last weekend as she provided Wales with their only points in a 36-5 defeat.

Wales’ most capped hooker, Ken Owens, has confirmed his retirement from rugby. The 37-year-old Scarlets forward – who has not played for almost a year because of a back injury – says he was advised to stop playing.

Taulupe Faletau is poised to return from injury for Cardiff this weekend – providing a huge boost to Wales’ hopes of picking themselves up off the floor this summer. The peerless Lions No.8 has not played since breaking his arm at the World Cup six months ago.

Welsh regions hoping to assemble squads to become competitive with the best in the United Rugby Championship have been given a sobering reminder of the size of that task after Leinster announced the capture of All Blacks star, Jordie Barrett.