Stuart Barnes has issued a stark warning for the future of rugby in Wales and feels a sliding doors moment could arrive this winter with Gareth Bale's football team at the World Cup.
The former England fly-half turned pundit says Wayne Pivac's side simply have to perform well against world champions South Africa on their three-Test summer tour in order to give Welsh rugby the fillip it desperately needs at the end of a woeful season.
Pivac's Six Nations champions embarrassingly crashed at home to Italy during the defence of their title, played in front of more than 10,000 empty seats against France and the four Welsh regions had a horrific time.
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They each bombed out of Europe without winning a game on the pitch - Cardiff were awarded one walkover victory - while the ninth-placed Ospreys were the best performing Welsh side in the 16-team United Rugby Championship. The Scarlets were one place worse off and even a club of Cardiff's magnitude, plus the Dragons, finished below Benetton.
Against this backdrop, Bale and his football team have provided sporting joy by beating Ukraine to reach Qatar 2022, when they come up against England, the USA and Iran in Group B with the eyes of the world upon them.
Barnes went as far as saying historians may record last Sunday's triumph "as the day when one of the greatest of traditional rugby nations began their inexorable descent from rugby legends to modern-day leftovers."
In column for the Sunday Times, Barnes wrote: "It wasn’t as if rugby union was the undisputed No 1 sport before Welsh qualification for the World Cup. Football has long eclipsed rugby as a participation sport. Cardiff City and Swansea City pull bigger crowds than their oval-ball rivals and on Sunday the Cardiff City Stadium may have been half the size of the Principality but it sounded twice as noisy as fans belted out their national anthem.
"Supporting the rugby team has always been an act of unbridled patriotism. Supporting the football team is now every bit as patriotic."
He pointed out: "Rugby is tiny compared with football. Alun Wyn Jones and Dan Biggar are dwarfed in the marketplace by Gareth Bale. Football qualification comes with a concern at a time when the rugby team are struggling. A generation of pre-teens are set to be turned on to football in a massive way in Wales."
It is why, Barnes emphasised, the coming tour to South Africa "has become critical for the future of this proud rugby country."
Wales have never won a Test in South Africa but Barnes warned they have to turn that around in July to stop a situation whereby "despair gives way to disinterest." He explains Wales' tour is far more important to them than Eddie Jones' England going to Australia or Ireland in New Zealand.
Barnes goes on to also talk of Wales' autumn internationals this year in Cardiff, against New Zealand, Argentina, Georgia and Australia, and how the football side also play their World Cup fixtures in November.
If Bale and his team can pull off a shock victory over Gareth Southgate's England, Barnes says that "would be sold as the biggest game in the history of Welsh sport."
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He continues: "They’ve won plenty of grand slams but never reached a football World Cup final. Rugby will be washed away on the populist tide of patriotic sporting fervour."
Barnes even reckons victory over New Zealand, something that hasn't happened since 1953 and which a Welsh nation has yearned for over the decades, would pale compared to a football World Cup victory against Harry Kane and Co in Qatar.
"However, should New Zealand wallop Wales on top of three beatings in South Africa, the Principality will be echoing in agonised cries of financial and sporting woe. The greater the success of Welsh football, the greater the fall for a troubled rugby nation on the brink," he concludes.
