It’s a long walk but Wales on right road
WE’VE all heard it: “You don’t beat Wales at rugby – you just score more points than them.” Like many sporting quips masquerading as truisms, this one tends to shrivel in the glare of scrutiny. “They looked pretty beaten to me,” smirked one of the Springboks who thumped Kingsley Jones’ befuddled tourists 96-13 on a gruesome afternoon in Pretoria a little over a quarter of a century ago.
Even so, there is something about the ancient one-liner that tickles the fancy, not least because there are two ways of reading it. Is it accusatory – a sardonic response to an apparent Welsh assumption that they would win every match if only the referee wasn’t useless, or blind, or crooked, or all three? Or is it celebratory – a grudging acknowledgement of the indomitability of the rugby spirit west of the Severn?
The question is worth asking now because, on the face of it at least, the Red Dragonhood find themselves a long way up the creek, paddleless. And should things go extra-wrong between now and next Saturday afternoon, the air will be pea-soup thick with recrimination.
Wales began this weekend 160 minutes away from a first Six Nations wooden spoon since 2003, five years before Warren Gatland embarked on his first tour of duty with the national team. Lest we forget, the New Zealander won a Grand Slam at his first attempt in 2008, which was a whole lot more than he managed after reassuming control ahead of the 2023 edition. That tournament also yielded a Slam, but Ireland were the ones who cleaned up. Wales? They finished fifth, a long way below the fold.
In keeping with the miserabilist “one thing after another” view of life, there has also been a fresh boiling-over of the ever-simmering conflict surrounding the structure of the country’s domestic game. Gatland has had sharp words to say on the subject, leading to an even sharper response from the regional sector, led by the Ospreys coach Toby Booth – rightly regarded as one of the brighter, more measured thinkers on the game.
Gatland has been down this road more than once. In his 2019 autobiography, he wrote of the difficulties of streamlining the set-up when confronted by “a minefield of loyalty and heritage”; argued that the success of the national team under his stewardship – three Slams, a fourth Six Naa tions title, two World Cup semi-finals in three attempts – had “papered over a lot of cracks”; and warned that somewhere along the line, “emotion will have to be removed from decision-making”.
Since then, no Welsh region has made the quarter-finals of the European Champions Cup – and none of them will make it this year, either, for the very good reason that the Round of 16 in April is a Welsh-free zone. And another thing: all four sides are in the bottom half of the United Rugby Championship table. And by way of rubbing it in, none of them have any money.
And yet (yes, there’s an “and yet”), whatever happens over the next few days, it is possible to think that Gatland and his team are on an upward trajectory. Not in a here-andnow sense, obviously, but in terms of reconstruction at the start of a World Cup cycle.
Who of us knew much about Cameron Winnett or Joe Roberts, Alex Mann or Kieron Assiratti ahead of this Six Nations? Who of us dreamed, on the wildest borders of sleep, that the greenest, least recognisable of red-shirted teams could go within a gnat’s crotchet of overhauling a strong Scotland side from 27-0 down? Who believed Wales were in any kind of position to do anything at all after the Dan Biggar-Leigh Halfpenny retirements and the injury to Jac Morgan, their kingpin performer at last year’s World Cup?
By those lights, Wales are a step ahead of the curve rather than miles behind it. They have the beginnings of the new team with power to add – there are plenty of things in short supply on their side of the bridge, but talent isn’t one of them – and Gatland can see the road ahead. It is
road he has trodden on previous occasions and if recent history tells us anything, he knows his way to the end of it.
Having pressed so many of the right buttons during his first spell in Wales, we can be sure he will seek to press them again this time round – principally by creating a vibrant culture at the team base west of Cardiff. Gatland has been known to express the view, inflammatory in some quarters but entirely logical from the perspective of those of us on the outside looking in, that the negative vibe around the regions creates a positive charge at the Vale of Glamorgan. “When they come into camp, they find themselves in an environment where they believe they can win things,” he once told your columnist.
Judging by the second 40 minutes against Scotland and the could haveshould have showing at Twickenham, there is something intriguing about this new Wales. It will be a long walk for them, but they already have their boots on. Which is a start.
“Whatever happens over the next few days, it is possible to see Wales on an upward trajectory”