Stuart Gallacher believes a fifth region is not viable

Scarlets chief executive Stuart Gallacher has written off any chance of a fifth region being set up in north Wales in the foreseeable future.

The Scarlets took north Wales under their wing in 2003, but only played a handful of games in Wrexham.

But now Gallacher believes there is little hope for a north Wales region.

"There isn't any hope of regional rugby, and certainly, a fifth region, coming to north Wales for a very, very long time, if ever," said Gallacher.

"My own personal view is that we have to walk before we can run and if they want to develop north Wales in any professional way they will have to put a semi-professional team in there first and foremost."

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Welsh Rugby Union group chief executive Roger Lewis had caused some controversy by suggesting there were plans for a north Wales region.

But Gallacher believes Lewis was misquoted.

"What he actually said was: the WRU were looking at all various avenues to develop rugby in north Wales. If a fifth region was ever viable they were looking to put it in north Wales. That's what he actually said," Gallacher told Scrum V Radio.

"My view is that the penance we had to pay in 2003 for standing alone when David Moffatt was here was that we had to take in mid and north Wales.

"The difficulty with north Wales is quite simple: it's three-and-a-half hours from Llanelli by road. There are a million people up there - there is obvious potential.

"The decision to play games in north Wales was taken out of our hands by a WRU working party led by Gerald Davies which looked at the issue of north Wales.

"The decision from that report was they would look at north Wales as a developing region and put in a semi-professional team if and when it was viable.

"The problem there is that Wrexham was fast-tracked a few years ago and they found themselves travelling down to the M4 corridor every other week.

"We are still active in north Wales. We have a development academy system but we don't play games there anymore.

"The games that were successful there were Wales A games and they would get 10,000 there. The biggest crowd we got in north Wales was 9,000 when we played Leinster.

"It is much too big a geographical region for us to handle. We are still very active with regards development but we are not in a position to take regional games up there."