Chris Hewett: Wales stuck in land of their fathers

Henry's departure has given WRU a unique opportunity to modernise structure of game in Principality

As of this moment, the tin-pot grandees of the Welsh Rugby Union understand less about their own business than Dylan Thomas knew about the temperance movement. They cannot say who will coach the national team in South Africa this summer, how many professional teams should compete at the top end of the club game, how next season's Celtic League format will shape up, or whether the half-baked Welsh-Scottish League will go ahead at all. The only reason they know about the Six Nations fixture with France a week today is because the French happened to mention it to them.

The WRU, an antediluvian body if ever there was one, has been fossilised for decades: unwieldy, inflexible and suspicious of anything more modern than a pie and a pint, it has fallen way behind the English and South African unions – organisations that once wallowed in their own conservatism, but are now engaged in bold processes of reinvention. The Millennium Stadium in Cardiff may have set a new benchmark in sporting architecture, but the governing classes inhabit a Gormenghast of their own making. Far from thinking the unthinkable, these people rarely think about anything.

Which is why Graham Henry has done Welsh rugby a major favour by quitting the most lucrative job in the sport. By walking away in so public a fashion, and at so early a stage in the Six Nations campaign, the £250,000-a-year New Zealander has concentrated the minds of those he has left behind, and forced any number of serious issues. He has planted an incendiary device beneath the general committee and sent a laxative coursing through a system laid low by constipation. In short, he has single-handedly created a climate for change.

It is deeply ironic that Henry's should have achieved all this by resigning, for he did everything in his power to dismantle the old structures during his 41 months in office. He was given complete autonomy over playing affairs – having trumpeted him as the "best coach in the world" and agreed to pay him a king's ransom, not even the WRU had the brass neck to tell their man who to pick and when – but he quickly discovered there was more to the Welsh rugby malaise than uninspired selection by his predecessors and questionable fitness levels among the élite players. The Red Dragon game was in trouble because it was off the pace and out of date, and try as he might, he could not fix that.

Not all of Henry's ideas made complete sense: his suggestion that Wales should move towards an Irish-style provincial system, with four teams playing at Heineken Cup level and everyone else playing for peanuts, would have involved a revolutionary series of club amalgamations, none of which would have been given the remotest of welcomes in the most forward-thinking of hillsides. Swansea joining forces with Neath? Cardiff holding hands with Bridgend? Newport climbing into bed for a nice little threesome with Pontypridd and Ebbw Vale? Modernisation is one thing, science fiction quite another.

As a result of his departure, though, the WRU has a unique opportunity to dust itself down and start over. There is no blank piece of paper – the leading professional clubs in Wales are every bit as protective of their assets as their English rivals, and besides, there are four rounds of a Six Nations tournament still to be played, and a World Cup to be contested next year. But the legions of committee men at least have some room to manoeuvre. As long as they are seen to be doing something, they can buy themselves sufficient time to reach the right conclusions. The only solution not open to them is a continuation of the status quo.

They have much to consider. As well as Henry's far-fetched provincial plan, there is the six-team blueprint put forward by Llanelli, Swansea, Newport, Cardiff, Bridgend and Pontypridd, who, strange to relate, think the half-dozen available places should be filled by themselves. Then there is the eight-team plan suggested by Sir Tasker Watkins' working party, who rightly felt that Neath should have a role to play in any brave new world, and could not quite bring themselves to ditch Ebbw Vale either. Fourth in line for evaluation is the so-called "Third Way" – well, this is Wales – promoted by Ebbw Vale, Caerphilly and Aberavon, who want to see a 10-team domestic league featuring, you guessed it, Ebbw Vale, Caerphilly and Aberavon.

Before the events of Wednesday evening, when the general committee were informed of Henry's decision to stand down, the restructuring debate was going nowhere fast. Sir Tasker's report had been tabled, and then sideboarded; there was no sense of urgency, no indication that anything might be in danger of actually happening. The WRU could not even make sense of next season's fixture list, having failed both to persuade the Irish to agree to an expansion of the Celtic League, and to talk the Scots into abandoning the Welsh-Scottish competition that is fast becoming an irritating boil on the backside of the rugby calendar.

Suddenly, the landscape has changed. Nothing has been solved as a result of Henry's decision, but there is at least a willingness to address some of the problems that drove him to it. "This situation is not of our choosing: the union certainly wanted Graham to remain in his post," said the WRU chairman, Glanmor Griffiths. "But it is also fair to suggest that there is now real impetus behind the restructuring work we know we have to do.

"We crave success in Wales. We are a great union, made up of great clubs, and I can assure the public that we are aware of the collective responsibility we bear. It is difficult to achieve change overnight: Graham proposed a provincial structure for the club game in this country, but even if the public took to the idea and the sponsors backed it, I very much doubt that a four-team format could be established in the short term. We also have our own proposals, contained in Sir Tasker's report, to consider. However, we will now look at our options as a matter of urgency. I think what has happened this week has sharpened our minds and accelerated the process in which we are engaged. We have to get one with it."

Griffiths indicated that the first priority was the establishment of an executive board to manage the professional end of the game, and he accepted that the leading clubs would have to be given seats on any new body – quite a departure for the man who fought Cardiff and Swansea tooth and nail throughout the 1998-99 season, when both boycotted official Welsh and European competitions and played unsanctioned matches against English teams instead.

If the chairman delivers – if he successfully cuts through the vested interests of scores of parish-pump rugby politicians and streamlines the decision-making process – he will bring Wales into line with the likes of England and South Africa and give the Red Dragonhood the chance to breath something more threatening than cold air in the faces of their opponents. Welsh rugby has had more than its share of Brezhnevs. Right now, it needs a Gorbachev.