Gatland is the quiet man with a streak of mischief
Even in his playing days the Waikato man was destined for coaching.
LIONS’ coach Warren Gatland may present as quiet to the point of being self-effacing, but it’d be a mistake to think he lacks initiative or confidence.
‘‘He’s not the sort of person who’s going to get in your face,’’ says Graham Purvis, a tighthead prop alongside Gatland at hooker for Hamilton Old Boys, Waikato, and the All Blacks. ‘‘But he’s always been a deep thinker about the game. As he’s matured I think he’s got better about getting his point across in public, but one on one he’s always been a good communicator.’’
An example of Gatland’s lowkey effectiveness came in his first year in the All Blacks, when he was the reserve hooker to Sean Fitzpatrick on the 1988 tour of Australia.
Gatland had introduced a game called Jail to the Waikato squad that sharpened skills. A schoolteacher, he’d first developed it with his pupils, brought it to his club side, and then to Waikato. Half a dozen balls were involved, and the basic aim was to avoid being tagged.
By the end of the All Black tour Jail was a part of most team training runs.
In isolation that’s unremarkable. But if there’s any other rookie All Black who introduced something new to team training in his first year with the side, I’ve never heard of him.
Talking to Fitzpatrick this week he mused that Gatland was probably destined to be a coach. ‘‘Even in his playing days he was always organising and developing plans.’’
It’d be a mistake to believe that Gatland is at all times the sort of person who never makes a decision without long, serious consideration.
In 1989 he was rooming with Purvis the night after they’d both played against the Connacht team in Galway. Purvis was woken at 8am by a phone call from one of the Irishmen he’d had a long and happy night drinking with.
The man, from the Galwegians club in Galway, wanted to continue a discussion that in the sober light of morning Purvis had no real memory of. ‘‘We need a tighthead,’’ said the Irishman, ‘‘and you’re the man we want.’’
Purvis had to explain he was committed to club rugby in France after the tour. Then he had a brainwave.
Holding his hand over the phone he asked Gatland, ‘‘Have you ever played prop?’’ ‘‘No.’’ ‘‘If I gave you a couple of lessons to play tighthead would you like to come here after the tour?’’ ‘‘I suppose so.’’ Purvis took his hand off the mouthpiece. ‘‘I can’t come, but Warren’s played a lot at tighthead. I’ll hand the phone over.’’
And that was how Gatland came to play (initially as a prop) the ‘89-90 season in Galway, during which he coached in Ireland for the first time. In 1996, just two years after retiring as a player, he was coaching Connacht, and in 1998 he took over as Ireland’s coach.
Purvis says that as a hooker, a position renowned for being second only to halfback for attracting sledgers, Gatland was never a loudmouth. His preferred riposte to a verbal attack was a little smile if his scrum hammered the opposition.
Which is not to say Gatland doesn’t have a streak of mischief GETTY IMAGES in him. During the 2005 Lions tour, for reasons which involved chaos in their huge public relations squad, I had a one on one interview for radio every week with their increasingly beleaguered coach, Clive Woodward.
At one point Gatland, then back in New Zealand with the Waikato side, had been reported as saying Irish players he knew in the Lions weren’t enjoying the tour, which had divided the playing groups into a test squad and a midweek squad.
After our formal interview Woodward asked if I could get a message to Gatland. Intrigued I agreed.
Could I tell him he was quite wrong about the Irishmen in the squad, said Woodward, and give him a friendly warning on Woodward’s behalf that he was doing himself considerable damage with the men he’d once coached with the comment.
Soon after I rang Gatland. I told him what Woodward had said. Over 30 years of very occasional, but always amiable, contact it’s the only time I’ve ever heard Gatland laugh out loud.