Warren Gatland a lucky man?

First published in The Rugby Paper on 24 October 2010 and reproduced with their consent

So, the wait is over and Wales have re-appointed Warren Gatland as their coach. Everyone concerned seems very pleased, but should they be? No matter how good a coach is reputed to be, and how good his past results have been, professional sport is about winning, and on the international stage, is Gatland a winner? At club level the question doesn't even need to be asked, but it's a valid one at international level.

His tenure with Wales started in a blaze of glory, winning the Grand Slam in his first season with them, but after that things got a bit more sticky, and his most recent season saw Wales lose eight and win just four – under-pressure Martin Johnson’s results are better than that, and those of Andy Robinson’s Scotland better still!  Those four Welsh wins were all at home and against Argentina, Samoa, Scotland and Italy – with all due respect to those nations, they aren't the top teams around. That set of results is surely not what a rugby-mad nation wants or deserves? Do they merit a four-year extension to his current contract? Well, someone at the WRU believes that they do but it seems to me that they've taken a sizeable risk that things are going to get better in the run-up to RWC 2011.

On that subject, Gatland went public with some pretty harsh criticism of Premier Rugby in the light of its current stance of not releasing foreign players until 35 days before the start of RWC 2011, in line with the IRB's guidelines. Their Regulation 9 declares that the assembly period starts 35 days before the competition, and that is the period when warm-up matches can be played. Similarly, the rules allow for three matches only in the November international window – play a fourth and you rely on the goodwill of a Union if you want your players released.

This doesn't suit the Welsh and all sort of pomposity was spouted. WRU Group Chief Executive, Roger Lewis trotted out 'scandalous', extraordinary' and 'deeply regrettable', and declared that he wouldn't talk to Premier Rugby, preferring to talk to his mates at the RFU. Warren Gatland repeated his scare tactics of hinting that players who dared to go over the bridge might find themselves disadvantaged when it comes to international selection.

England cracked this one when the RFU got out its chequebook and compensated the clubs for the loss of their players. If the WRU feels strongly about the situation the remedies are in its own hands: it either campaigns to get the IRB regulations changed, or it stumps up the cash to 'buy' its players back for the relevant period.  

As for the players themselves, let's hope that they hold their nerve and don't allow themselves to be spooked by Gatland's stance: if they're good enough, and playing well, then my hunch is that he'll come calling irrespective of where they're plying their trade.

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The cabaret that is All Black rugby provided yet another fascinating moment recently.  In the past the ABs have named their side on the Tuesday before a Test Match, but they now want to delay the announcement until the Thursday.  Steve Hansen explained that this is because they fear they’re making life too easy for the opposition analysts.  Fair enough, if that’s what they want to do then there’s some good sense in it, although some might think that this is justt another sign of the pressure building on the coaches ahead of RWC 2011.  However, it was what came next that caught my eye.

The AB management plans to call upon the NZ press corps to be patriotic and hold back on speculating about the starting XV until the announcement has been made because, as Hansen put it, “We’re all New Zealanders and we’re all in it together”!  So, the NZ press will see the likely combinations at training sessions, but they’ll be asked not to publish it in the national interest.  The word that comes to my mind is ‘poppycock’, and we have to hope that the members of the press down there aren’t daft enough to allow themselves to be controlled in this way.

If they gave in to that pressure, what would come next: a patriotic request only to write nice things about the coaches, or maybe a voluntary ban on reporting Tests that didn’t go well for the All Black team?  What about those journalists who aren’t at the training sessions but fancy having a punt on guessing the AB side?  After all, it’s hardly rocket science, and the opposition analysts will have done their homework on pretty well every likely combination well ahead of a Thursday announcement.

 Here’s what any self-respecting journalist should do: they should treat Hansen’s daft suggestion with the contempt that it deserves, and tell him and his colleagues to get on with the coaching, and leave the writing to them.