Rugby: Scarlets in Plea Over Peel

Llanelli Scarlets will today urge the acting Wales head coach Scott Johnson to release Dwayne Peel for Saturday's Powergen Cup semi-final against Bath at the Millennium Stadium. Johnson has made available the Scarlets' other eight Wales squad members, but he is reluctant to release Peel, who suffered an ankle injury in the first-half of last Sunday's defeat to Ireland in Dublin, because he has a lack of options at scrum-half with Gareth Cooper out for the rest of the season after an operation on his left shoulder.

"Dwayne is fit to play and he is keen to take the field," said the Scarlets' chief executive Stuart Gallacher. "I have requested a meeting with Scott Johnson because I feel it is important that we are able to field our strongest available side in what is our biggest match of the season.

"We are the only Welsh team left in the competition and none of the four regions has made the knockout stage of the Heineken Cup. Bath will be at full strength and the same goes for Wasps and Leicester in the other semi-final. If we had been playing our scheduled Celtic League fixture against Newport Gwent Dragons, we would not have sought the release of any of our Wales squad members, but a semi-final is different."

Under a charter signed between the Welsh Rugby Union and the four regions 18 months ago, players are released from the squad during the November internationals and Six Nations at the discretion of the national coach.

"The Powergen Cup did not exist then and I think we would be within our rights to pick Dwayne," said Gallacher. "We do not want to go down the road of confrontation, not least because we would be putting Dwayne in the awkward position of having to choose, which is why we want to talk to Scott face to face."

Johnson will take some convincing. "There is a compromise to be had," he said. "Some kids need games and we want them to play, while others are out of form and need to play themselves back into it. We have decided to release all the players to the Scarlets except Dwayne and we feel that is a nice compromise for both parties."

Matthew Watkins, Mark Jones, Lee Byrne, Barry Davies, Dafydd James, Dafydd Jones, Alix Popham and Matthew Rees are all free to play.

A fortnight ago, in his final day in charge, the former Wales head coach Mike Ruddock said: "As things stand, we have an agreement whereby on any weekend prior to a Wales international, the Welsh-based players selected within the starting XV for Wales will stand down for their region." However, Ruddock added that the situation would be reviewed after the Ireland game - which is what Johnson has done.