It was devastating Gatty and Trudi
WALES v IRELAND
“The land of priests and poets and politic and pints of the black stuff of with and wild roving and a brand of rugby that was both rugged and romantic.”
Warren Gatland from his book Pride and Passion, Headline Publishing, 2019
THOSE who think they know, that they know of, or even know all there is to know about Warren Gatland, should tread carefully.
He has been, by turn, painted as a taciturn Kiwi without a scintilla of social grace or skill...
Portrayed as an overtly blunt operator, easily dismissed as a caricature...
A careerist with disdain for all things Irish following being sacked as Ireland coach and who prosecuted this agenda for the bones of two decades...
None of above are true and miss the person — husband, father, person, loyal, comic, rugby fanatic, at its most complex.
His time here shaped his life dramatically — and some may find this an uneasy read.
Sure, there is a CV that shows stints at Galwegians, Connacht and Ireland but it was here Warren and Trudi Gatland suffered every parent’s nightmare, facing up to the loss of a child.
Their first-born, daughter Shauna, would not survive for long following her January 1992 birth in University Hospital, Galway.
And if it is true that this coach’s coaching back story is oft-celebrated, told at times with a deal of tongue-in-cheek, then the over-arching tragedy for a young player\coach and his wife so far from home, betting his future on oval ball sport, sounds like something from a different author.
Gatland had arrived in Galway cheerfully bluffing about his credentials in advance of finding Galwegians had equally bluffed about their set-up!
But theirs was a rugby match made in heaven, beginning with his very first training session.
Jody Greene was scrum-half at Galwegians at the time, an important job given the brilliant Eric Elwood was at out-half.
Opposition
“Warren was a good player, a wily front-row operator and as a scrum-half you hear some things at scrum time others might not and he could be a fierce sledger when dealing with the opposition,”he says.
“As a coach he was brilliant at creating structure had a precise game-plan that had the ball in certain places off third and fourth phase so that our forwards knew exactly what angles to take to get there first.
“He was also good at specifics, one day I was astonished to hear a player with his head down in a scrum most of the time tell our centre Frank
Mitchell ‘the last four times you started your run your sprang off your left foot — you should be starting off your right foot…’!
“We ended up having the best front-row in the country after he spotted and signed two props playing junior rugby Pat McGrath from Monivea and Pat Leahy from Loughrea.”
Moving forward, Gatland would attain his primary objective, securing AIL status for the club, subsequently build Connacht into a respected unit and, taking the Ireland job at short notice, steadied a sinking ship.
But behind the scenes there was heartache for Gatland who has said of his time here:
“The big thing, the overwhelming thing, that happened in Ireland put sport in its proper context,” he wrote in his autobiography ‘Pride and Passion’.
“I cannot think of Ireland without thinking of Shauna. No matter what I might be doing or where I might be on the planet.”
Cruelly, life holds all kinds of malevolent surprises.
That child Shauna, their first, passed away at the age of four months.
Says Greene of that deeply saddening period: “Of course we knew about their daughter at the time, what had happened. We were with them all the way.
Family
“They came in together at a time when they didn’t have kids. Warren was really devastated. I remember saying to him once ‘Gatty this is, you know, really about you now, you have to stand up and be there for your family.
“This is about your family now.”
Gatland had arrived in Galway a happily married man and in Trudi chosen a partner for life, for thick and thin.
“Himself and Trudi were very close, you would nearly call them sorta ‘business partners in life’ because, remember, he had made the decision to come here aged just 25,” continues Greene.
“It was a bigger risk for her maybe than it was for him. We had talked with Warren, he had talked with her and it was an agreed, they came in together.
“Even when we were (right) training at Galwegians Trudi was well able to assist, she would do some gym therapy, aerobic classes and all that.
“In fact part of our training was a couple of sessions with her in the gym and, by Jesus, you didn’t want to be at those sessions not feeling the best.
“They could be far worse than some of the sessions on the pitch!”
The news Trudi was pregnant that summer of 1991 was to be celebrated and the young couple, counting down the months, were excited.
Having gone into labour, the expectant mother was admitted to University Hospital in Galway without a flag of any description being thrown down; there was no sign there was a cold hand of fate in wait.
Shauna, born, in the wee hours of
January 17, 1992 registered seven and a half pounds, with her parents overjoyed.
But what Warren spotted, on looking around to share his joy and approval, was the tears in the eyes of the nursing staff.
Sent for an immediate scan, Shauna, he would subsequently be told, was suffering from spina bifida.
Confronted
What was next was difficult, excruciating, nightmarish for the devastated couple.
“Over the next few days, as we talked things through with the specialist staff, it became clear that we would be confronted with the most awful of dilemmas,” Gatland recalled.
“Should we follow the road of sur