Jonathan Davies: Red-faced Scarlets have to hang heads in shame

The way Phil Davies was treated by Llanelli last week was a disgrace to the club and a blot on the game. I have to declare an interest in that Phil is my brother-in-law and we made our Welsh debuts in the same game, so I am hardly likely to be unbiased about any matter involving him.

But if anyone else had been humiliated in the way he was, I'd be just as incensed. And it was all because of a top-level leak that no one is owning up to.

Whether or not Phil deserved to lose his job as head coach of the Scarlets is a separate debate to the brutal and shambolic way the club went about the messy business of ushering him off the premises.

Phil had returned from a player-signing mission to New Zealand with the chief executive, Stuart Gallacher, last Monday. On Tuesday they held a press conference to discuss their recruitment plans. Later that day, the Western Mail was told that Davies's contract was to be terminated. The tip-off was so certain that the paper blasted the news on its front page on Wednesday morning.

Until he was told of the paper's contents, Davies had not the slightest inkling that his fate was sealed, and turned up as usual at Stradey Park to start work for the day and to seek information about the story, but everyone seemed as much in the dark as he was.

It wasn't until midday that Llanelli's chairman, Huw Evans, called Davies in to tell him his contract was to be terminated on 31 May and, furthermore, he was asked to stay away from Stradey in the meantime and have no contact with players or staff. You don't treat wrongdoers like that, never mind a respected coach who is in the middle of a four-year contract.

I understand that had the story not been leaked, Phil's departure would not have been confirmed until the end of the season and handled in a proper fashion. The club maintain it was the untimely announcement that caused the embarrassing parting of the ways. But who was responsible for the leak? The club deny it was anyone from Llanelli RFC. They say it was another source. But it must have been an unimpeachable source for the paper to take it as solid fact, and there is lots of high-level finger-pointing going on.

Other people obviously knew, and I understand one or two players were aware of what was about to happen, so not to give Phil the slightest warning and to submit him to such a public indignity was shameful and typical of the lack of professionalism that still exists in Welsh rugby. After the wonderful way Wales's stock in the world was restored in the Six Nations, this drags the nation's name in the mud again.

No one can deny thatthe Scarlets have had an unsuccessful campaign, but in his first season Davies transformed an under-performing team into one of the best in Europe, reaching a Heineken Cup semi-final. Second-season syndrome is not unknown and I'm sure one or two of the players would confess to a lack of contribution, but none of the four Welsh regions have avoided a lean spell in the recent years.

There have been rumours of the sword hanging over the heads of the three other coaches – Dai Young, Lyn Jones and Paul Turner. But rumours and rumblings are a fact of life in Welsh rugby, and the regionshave stood solidly behind their coaches.

It is significant that each of them expressed shock at the way Phil was treated – so have many people across South Wales. Llanelli bowed to the pressures, and not in a way to be proud of.