WHILE the Dragons players enjoy their final few days off before heading back to Ystrad Mynach for the second block of pre-season training and a return to the hamster wheel of professional rugby, it remains destination unknown Leigh Halfpenny.

It’s just over a month until the Top 14 gets under way while the Guinness PRO?? and English Premiership kick off in the first weekend of September.

Yet one of the biggest names in world rugby remains club-less.

Halfpenny isn’t quite in the situation where he’s asking the analysts at Cardiff Blues, Toulon and Wales to stitch together his best bits for him to upload a video onto YouTube but the 28-year-old must have a smidgen of alarm at a remarkable situation.

The broken-field exploits of Stuart Hogg and Liam Williams mean that perhaps Halfpenny, who is hardly a slouch, isn’t in vogue at the moment.

However, the Lions’ man of the series against Australia four years ago remains one of the best 15s around with strong attacking game, rock-solid defence, excellent decision making, piffling error count and an unerring right boot.

While he hasn’t scored an international try since crossing against Ireland in the 2013 Six Nations, that 35-Test streak is an indication of Welsh stodginess rather than Halfpenny sluggishness.

Add into the mix the fact that he is a lovely, unassuming, hard-working bloke who is incredibly marketable and you are left scratching your head as to why the full-back is still on the market.

It has been another bonkers summer of transfer activity in the Premier League and the vast sums are balanced by clubs being able to exploit their new players’ commercial reach.

Last year it was #POGBACK at Manchester United and this summer it was #welcomehomeWayne with Everton making the most of Rooney’s 15million Twitter followers to become news in far flung markets.

Of course, rugby doesn’t have such influence but Halfpenny is still huge with 420,000 followers on Twitter. The Welsh Rugby Union have 410,000, the Dragons have 35,000, the Scarlets 53,000, Ospreys 57,000, Cardiff Blues 70,000.

That’s partly why the full-back commands such a big wage. That’s also why there aren’t many clubs that can afford the Under Armour athlete.

They also have to weigh up the value of an established current international given the current bloated Test schedule.

In a post-Lions year Halfpenny will probably play a maximum of 20 games (Taulupe Faletau turned out 19 times for the Dragons after Australia four years ago) so, even if he accepted a wage cut of £300,000 a season, each fixture would cost a club £15,000.

That leaves teams with a conundrum of whether they back themselves to make it worth signing a Test beast who is highly-marketable.

There are a handful of teams with the marketing budget and manpower to cash in on the Halfpenny brand (sorry for such a horrid term) and a few in France who don’t care making a loss on a statement signing.

The Welsh regions would all reluctantly rather have £300,000 to £400,000 to strengthen their sides with two quality players, and it remains to be seen whether Halfpenny is ready for a return home at this stage of his career.

While it is nice to dream of the Dragons attracting such a player with the WRU now calling the shots, it would also take a heck of a sales pitch to make that reality at the start of a new era.

The list of potential destinations appears to have shrunk in recent weeks and months with Wasps and Bath dropping out of the running for Halfpenny.

However, the team that does take the risk will get great reward from Halfpenny, even at the vast sums being mentioned.

Not only is he a winner on the pitch but Halfpenny is a dream for the marketing and commercial departments.

It won’t only be the coaching teams at upwardly-mobile clubs saying that they can make such an expensive signing work.

South Wales Argus:

AT this stage the opening weekend of the Guinness PRO12/14 will take the form of a mystery stag do – get to the airport by 9am on Friday, September 1 with your passport and only then will you learn your destination.

Understandably things are up in the air at the moment while the fine detail of the introduction of South Africa sides is sorted out.

It’s best things are done properly but the clock is ticking and the complete silence doesn’t paint the league in a particularly professional light.

One imagines (one hopes?) that the big wigs have an inkling what is going on regarding the schedule, but the rest of us are in the dark.

The first ball will be kicked in just 38 days and we still don’t know if the Dragons, now run by the Welsh Rugby Union and with Bernard Jackman at the helm, will start their new era in Newport, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Galway, Dublin, Belfast, Limerick, Cork, Swansea, Cardiff, Llanelli, Parma, Treviso, Port Elizabeth or Bloemfontein.

One pities the poor souls tasked with sorting out the teams’ group bookings for hotels in September – an away game at Myreside may instead end up with 24 separate Airbnb lodgings from Dalkeith to Linlithgow.

But it’s not those who earn their trade from the sport that I feel for, it’s those who actually dip into their own pocket to watch a game they love.

The reasons for the late announcement may be understandable but the PRO12/14 chiefs must realise that it’s the existing support base, those that have already committed to being in their usual seat or spot on the terrace on that first weekend of September, that they are cheesing off.

We’ve grudgingly accepted that fixture lists now come with Friday/Saturday while the broadcasters make their picks but to not even know which weekends are home and away, or how many games a season ticket includes, is farcical even by Celtic League standards.

The battle to get punters through the gates rather than sat watching on television becomes even harder when customers are an afterthought.

While this summer has been an extreme and challenging situation, league bosses must learn from leaving supporters in the pitch black with barely an acknowledgement.