Thomas searches the world for a cure to Cardiff's blues

While almost everything in Wales's Grand Slam garden is rosy, the glaring exception is the plight of the Cardiff Blues. As the big hitters of the Euro-pean game gear up for the semi-finals of the Heineken Cup, the club once regarded as "the greatest" in the world have been scratching around to qualify for next season.

Time was when Cardiff would look down on, or at least sideways at, the likes of Leicester and Toulouse. But the Blues had to sweat on Connacht's result last night before scraping through to a play-off in six weeks away to Italy's third-best team (probably Calvisano) for the 24th and last Heineken Cup spot.

The Blues have suffered the growing pains common to all the Welsh regions. But, in whatever guise, Cardiff - who contested the first Heineken final, against Toulouse in 1996- have failed to make the knockout stages in the past four seasons. It is underachievement on a grand scale, as their chairman, Peter Thomas, admits.

"I'm absolutely determined these lean years have got to end," Thomas said before Friday's 33-12 Celtic League defeat of the Borders. "It's a hugely disappointing season and we've taken a hard look at ourselves."

The question is whether Thomas is being hard enough. Few can doubt his commitment - he shored up the company who run the Blues and the semi-professional Cardiff side to the tune of £3m last year. He knows that winning teams - Wales and the Celtic League champions, Neath-Swansea Ospreys - generate momentum. The win over the Borders was only the Blues' ninth in 26 matches. But if disgruntled supporters are looking to Thomas for a cash-driven revolution, it appears they will have to settle for quieter evolution.

"There will be a lot of players retiring this year and we're going for quality people coming in," said Thomas. "But there are massive clubs out there like Stade Français, Biarritz, Toulouse, Wasps and Leicester, with double the budget and double the income we've got, and no restriction on foreign players like Wales have got."

On paper, the Blues' squad looks good. On the green, green grass of the Arms Park, less so. Last summer the Blues released the rugby league saviour who wasn't, Iestyn Harris, but they still have 25 internationals on their books. A cinema-style poster outside the ground portrays the "Magnificent Seven": the Grand Slam participants Martyn Williams, Gethin Jenkins, Robert Sidoli, Rhys Williams, Robin Sowden-Taylor, John Yapp and Tom Shanklin. The highly-rated scrum-half Mike Phillips has been recruited from Llanelli.

But Dai Young, the former Wales and Lions prop in his first coaching job, wants quality overseas signings to give leadership to a batch of useful youngsters when the Wales stars are away. The regions are limited to bringing in two non-Wales qualified players, and the Blues have been linked with the New Zealanders Reuben Thorne and Xavier Rush.

It was deeply unsatisfactory that top men like the Blues' three Lions - Martyn Will-iams, Jenkins and Shanklin - were training at a David Lloyd leisure centre and a public park in Llanrumney. "We're moving into a new training headquarters at the Vale of Glamorgan which is first- class," said Thomas.

But Terry Holmes, who coached Cardiff for a spell under Thomas, is unconvinced. Holmes, the Wales scrum-half who followed in a glorious line of Cardiff heroes stretching back through Gareth Edwards to Barry John, Cliff Morgan, Wilf Wooller and Gwyn Nicholls, is doubting Thomas's ability to act where it counts most.

"They need some leadership off the field," said Holmes. "David Young is learning, but it needs a director of rugby, rugby's equivalent of a Mourinho. They might have to go on a worldwide search. I don't think the personnel are there to drive the club on to another level, as the Ospreys have done. If you look at a blueprint of a club, Toulouse are up there, along with Leic-ester, and that's where Cardiff should be. It could be make-or-break time for the board."

Thomas consulted the Wales coach, Mike Ruddock, on the issue and insists Young - assisted by Richard Webster, Neil Jenkins and, from 1 June, Rob Howley - will stay in charge. Each of the regions will receive £1.76m Welsh Rugby Union funding next season, and Thomas has told his fellow Cardiff shareholders he no longer wants to be "their banker". Significantly, he defines the way ahead as a "true, honest and equal partnership with the WRU", which might be seen as a pointer towards central contracts. Cardiff's previous insistence on stand-alone status cost them £500,000, and obduracy lives on in the members-only Cardiff Athletic Club, owners of the Arms Park and staunch opponents of the regional concept.

There is a clear identity crisis in the capital, and Thomas has "sympathy" with critics who want more done to embrace the region, particularly the Mid-Glamorgan valleys, but says "it takes time".

Nothing is more emblematic of wasted time than the section of the Arms Park's south stand which sticks out like a permanent boil on a backside behind one goal at the Millennium Stadium. The Ospreys are about to flutter into the 20,000-seat Morfa Stadium, and the Scarlets have a new ground in the pipeline.

Cardiff could have had a new home; instead the Millennium was built around them. It is up to Thomas to turn the tide of history back in the Blues' favour.