MORE United Rugby Championship games are set to be played during the Six Nations because of a raft of Covid postponements.

The revamped league had attempted to avoid clashes with Test rugby after the introduction of four South African sides.

However, they will be forced into a rethink due to winter problems with coronavirus outbreaks.

The Dragons have already had two festive derbies postponed with the Boxing Day trip to Swansea delayed due to positives in the Ospreys' squad and then the New Year's Day clash with Cardiff at Rodney Parade being called off due to cases in both camps.

The Welsh clubs will be keen for games to be slotted in later in the campaign when they are able to have supporters in the stands.

South Wales Argus:

The end of the season is scheduled for May 21 and there are just four blank weekends in the Dragons' fixture list before then, although that could increase in the absence of knockout European rugby.

They don't have a game on the weekend of January 21 but that is due to a bye in the group stages of the Challenge Cup.

The Dragons don't have games on the first two weekends of February, host Ulster on a Six Nations fallow week and then have another spare weekend before taking on Munster in Limerick on March 5.

The URC is then scheduled to return immediately after the Six Nations finale when the Dragons are meant to take on the Bulls and Sharks in a double-header in South Africa.

It isn't just festive games that have to be slotted into the crammed calendar after Cardiff, the Scarlets, Munster and Zebre had games postponed because of the Omicron variant.

Those fixtures have been pencilled in for the final two weekends of the Six Nations but Arms Park chief Dai Young is unsure after his squad and staff were caught in a quarantine nightmare.

"We'll take a bit of convincing, to be quite honest," he said. "The onus is on the URC, really, to convince us that it's the right thing to do."

Edinburgh head coach Mike Blair has already pointed out the challenges of fitting in their derbies against Glasgow during the Six Nations.

The former Scotland captain and coach said: "Being new in this job, I don't know how much of a say I have got. I would imagine not a huge amount.

"I would imagine my bosses, the URC, they will tell me when the game is and to prepare the team as best we can for that date.

"I would imagine it would be difficult to do during the Six Nations because ourselves and Glasgow are going to have, I imagine, 15 to 20 players involved in that.

"You don't know if Scotland are going to call up an extra tighthead at the last minute to make the game unavailable.

"It's very difficult to schedule into the calendar. But there are cleverer people than me out there and I am sure they will find ways of hopefully getting the game going because the crowd love these games, we love these games, the players love it."