EXCLUSIVE:  Warren Gatland’s contract wish list

Warren Gatland has drawn up a hit list of ten Welsh-based players to be offered dual club-and-country contracts for the coming season.
As the conflict between the WRU and its four Regions drags on into a tenth month, Wales‘ head coach will restart negotiations this week in a renewed attempt to strike a deal over the terms and conditions of the proposed player signings.
Gatland’s document forming the basis of the talks contains the names of ten players and lists them ‘in priority recruitment order’. The Rugby Paper can reveal them:
No 1 – Sam Warburton (flanker). Age: 25. Tests: 46.
Already done and dusted but has remained one-man band since signing a three-year central contract with the WRU in January. The Union tried to sign five others but failed in every case.
No 2 – Alun-Wyn Jones (second row). Age: 28. Tests: 80.
Turned down the WRU’s offer in January, preferring to stay with the Ospreys – ‘the right environment to ensure the longevity of both my domestic and international careers’.
No 3 – Taulupe Faletau (No.8). Age: 23. Tests: 36.   
Rejected bigger offers from France and England last year in favour of remaining in Newport with the Dragons.    Three-year deal takes him through to June 2016.
No 4 – Gareth Anscombe (fly-half/full-back). Age: 23. Tests: 0.
Currently being fitted out for a parachute after signing for Cardiff Blues in what was always going to be a joint Union deal.
No 5 – Alex Cuthbert (wing). Age: 24. Tests: 26.   
Will be open to the highest bidder when his Blues contract runs out next year,  hence the WRU attempt to make a pre-emptive strike.
No 6 – Ken Owens (hooker). Age: 27. Tests: 25. 
Has moved rapidly up the national rankings since the last World Cup. Could be going to the next one as first-choice following Richard Hibbard’s transfer to Gloucester.
No 7 – Dan Biggar (fly-half). Age: 24. Tests: 25.
Maturing into a real Test level performer as he showed in South Africa in June. Will continue, all being well, in the autumn in readiness for Anscombe’s challenge later in the season.
No 8 – Gethin Jenkins (loosehead prop). Age: 33. Tests: 107.
Gatland will want to limit his club matches and ensure his most-capped player gets to the World Cup next year in one piece.
No 9 – Scott Williams (centre). Age: 23. Tests: 25. 
Like Alun-Wyn Jones and Rhys Priestland, declined to follow Warburton into the WRU, signing a two-year extension with the Scarlets last season.
No 10 – Liam Williams (Full back-wing). Age: 23.  Tests: 14.
The Welsh players’ Player of the Year, as elected by his peers after a domestic season crowned by his riotous running in the 51-3 rout of Scotland. Out of contract at the Scarlets next year.
Adam Jones had been omitted from the list not because Wales didn’t want him but because they believed he had decided to play in England. Bristol were going to sign him and sub-contract him to Sale until the end-of-season play-offs for promotion to the Premiership.
That deal collapsed when Sale changed their mind. It can be revealed today that the Ospreys paid Jones as per normal in June despite the fact that his contract ran out at the end of May.
After a difficult season which ended with his premature withdrawal from the two-Test series in South Africa in June, Jones would appear to be left with nowhere to go but back to the Ospreys whose alternative tighthead, Aaron Jarvis, is part of Wales’ future.
Gatland has included Jarvis among a secondary list of 27 contenders for dual contracts if not right away then in due course. That list contains a quartet of teenagers with 18-year-old Dragons centre Tyler Morgan the youngest.
Three 19-year-olds have been earmarked for dual contracts, including two more from the Newport-based Dragons – uncapped centre Jack Dixon and wing Hallam Amos, capped against Tonga last November. Ospreys wing Dafydd Howells completes the quartet.
A player signing a dual contract will be employed by both his Region and the WRU.    The critical decision will be over striking a balance between how much more access the national team require and how many, or how few, matches the player will be available for his region.
The WRU are proposing to stump up £2m towards the cost of the dual contracts with the Regions paying another £2m. Gatland, under the impression before he left for a holiday in New Zealand that an agreement was within reach, will be dismayed to learn that the warring factions are, according to one negotiator, ‘miles apart’.
“Once again our benefactors are having to prop up the professional game out of their own pocket,” an official said.  “It’s an absolute disgrace that the season is just four weeks away and we still don’t have an agreement.”
PETER JACKSON