Simon Thomas, of the South Wales Echo, outlines the restructuring mess which threatens Neath's future.

You would hardly imagine that Neath are on the verge of one of the biggest games in their history given the coverage of the club in the Welsh media over the past fortnight.

Don't get me wrong, there has been no shortage of material about the Welsh All Blacks. It's just that it's all been related to off-the-field issues instead of their Celtic League final against Munster.

The subject that has hogged the headlines above all is the question of who owns Neath Rugby Club.

It's a debate which has it roots in the summer of 1998. In the previous 12 years, the club had enjoyed unprecedented success.

They were Welsh champions four times, Welsh Cup winners twice and finalists on three further occasions. In 1989 they gave the All Blacks the fright of their lives and they also pushed Australia and South Africa close at the Gnoll.

But then, in the mid-1990s, came the club's nemesis - the onset of professionalism. Like many clubs, they over-stretched themselves and, by the end of the 1997-98 season, they were faced with crippling financial problems.

Enter the Welsh Rugby Union, who came in with a rescue package, setting up a subsidiary company, Gowerpark Ltd, to take over the club.

Neath survived and over the past five years they steadily re-established themselves as a major force in the Welsh game under the astute coaching of Lyn Jones.

During that period, the question of their ownership hasn't really been an issue. That is, until earlier this month.

The background against which it has reared its head has been the proposed restructuring of the professional game in Wales.

There has been talk for years of Welsh rugby following the Irish and Southern Hemisphere lead and heading down the provincial route. But it had been little more than talk until the arrival of new Welsh Rugby Union chief executive David Moffett just before Christmas.

He immediately installed regional rugby at the top of the agenda, making it clear that he felt there was scope for only four professional teams in Wales, both in terms of finance and playing talent.

Rather than wait to have their destiny shaped for them, Neath attemped to shape their own by agreeing to join forces with Bridgend to form one of the new regional sides.

Newport and Ebbw Vale reached a similar understanding in east Wales, but the picture was not so straight-forward elsewhere.

Llanelli and Cardiff opposed the four-team plan, insisting they should stand alone, and rejected the idea of mergers with Swansea and Pontypridd respectively.

Faced with this resistance, Moffett threw the ball back into the clubs' court and challenged them to come up with their own alternative.

This they finally appeared to have done a fortnight ago when it was announced that they'd reached agreement on a five-team blueprint, involving Newport-Ebbw Vale, Pontypridd-Bridgend and Swansea-Neath mergers, with Llanelli and Cardiff both standing alone.

Yet this didn't quite ring true as Neath officials had consistently rejected the idea of linking up with local rivals Swansea.

And then it emerged that Neath's representative Mike Cuddy had not been present at the final meeting where the five-team deal was struck.

But this, according to Moffett, was not a problem. "In respect of Neath, that is a matter for the WRU as we own Neath," he said.

The implication was clear. The union could do what they wanted with the club and force them to go with whoever they wanted.

Not surprisingly the clubs saw red. The next day, Neath held a joint press conference with their preferred partners Bridgend, where they challenged Moffett's statement. It emerged that director Cuddy had been attempting to buy the club from the union and there were claims that written documentation existed to show that his bid had been accepted.

A further press conference followed the same afternoon with Moffett saying he knew nothing of such a deal and that the union definitely owned Neath.

Then, last week, the tale took a further twist of seismic proportions when it was claimed that the WRU had never actually acquired ownership of the club in the first place.

Out of the shadows came the old Neath committee who insisted they still held the lease to the Gnoll, its stands, clubhouse and other material assets. The only assets the WRU held rights to, they claimed, were player contracts.

Back came the union with their own counter-claim, with chairman Glanmor Griffiths maintaining that the WRU owned the club.

Whoever you believed, there was one thing everyone was agreed upon -it was an unholy mess.

Without Neath merging with Swansea, there was no way of reaching a workable agreement among the Premier teams. And given the uncertainty over the club's ownership, there was little prospect of the union forcing them into an unwanted arranged marriage.

In truth, one questions whether they would have had the bottle to do so even if there had been no doubt over who owned the club.

The end result is that Moffett has been left with just his own plan for four regional franchises to put on the table.

And that faces seemingly unsurmountable obstacles in the shape of legal action from Pontypridd and Swansea, who both fear they would be left out in the cold, with Cardiff and Llanelli likely to be awarded the franchises in their respective regions.

All of which leaves Welsh rugby faced with the prospect of remaining unchanged with a top-tier of nine clubs. One of those would, of course, be Neath.

Oh yes and, by the way, they're playing Munster today.