THORNBURY RFC coach and former Wales captain, Gareth Llewellyn, has ruled himself out of the running for the vacant Cardiff Blues head coach position.

The former Wales lock earned 92 caps for his country and started coaching Thornbury in 2009 following his retirement from international rugby in 2005.

He led Thornbury to promotion from Western Counties North into South West One West, five tiers below the Aviva Premiership.

"I would love to try and aspire to coach at the top level. It's not going to happen with Cardiff Blues this year, that's for sure," Llewellyn told BBC Wales website.

"I think they've got ambitions elsewhere, so I've got other things to do as well in the game.
"Maybe that'll happen in the future maybe it won't, I don't know."

Llewellyn has openly criticised the current state of the Blues following their tenth place finish in the league last year.

"What has happened, it's been a shambles hasn't it?" Llewellyn told BBC Wales' Scrum V Radio programme.

"But it's not just been a shambles for this year, it's been coming for a long time.

"They've got a decent squad and when I watch them, you think it's very fixable.

"There are a lot of things in their game that they're doing very poorly - it's not all down to individual errors, there are systematic errors in their game.

"You can't help watching it thinking that it could easily be improved; it would take a long time to make them a very good team but they could be turned around fairly quickly to make them a competitive team.

"There's all sorts of theories about what has happened but certainly the continual changing of coaches would be a big part of it; maybe the choice of the coaches as well.

"What they really need to do now is to settle on the right person and give him time in charge."