Welcome home, son: Bryn’s back
The Chiefs snap up another highly-rated Gatland as the key playmaker for their Super Rugby squad next year.
Just as one Gatland heads out the door, the Chiefs are set to have another in their ranks for the 2021 Super Rugby season.
While coach Warren Gatland is set to have a year off to lead the British and Irish Lions’ tour to South Africa, the Sunday StarTimes understands his son, Bryn Gatland, will be revealed as a significant multi-year signing when the Chiefs squad is announced early next month.
The 25-year-old first fiveeighth was off contract with the Highlanders and the timing couldn’t have been better to lure him home to Hamilton, with the departure to Japan of both
Aaron Cruden and Tiaan Falcon leaving the Chiefs desperately short on playmakers.
Of course the father-son link will naturally make for the potential of some nepotism scepticism, and present the odd awkwardmoment, in what is a strikingly similar situation to that at the Penrith
Panthers NRL club, where coach Ivan Cleary is also the father of chief playmakerNathan
Cleary.
Gatland’s first year won’t actually be in official partnership with dad, asWarren hands over the coaching reins to Clayton McMillan for a season, unless Covid-19 has the final say on the Lions tour, which could see the coach back in some capacity. But it’s understood Gatland senior still had a big say in recruitment for 2021, and last week chief executive Michael Collins noted he had been in and out of Chiefs HQ after escaping lockdown in the northern hemisphere, well in time to attend nextmonth’s wedding of his daughter, Gabby. Nonetheless, Bryn Gatland – who had a stellar Mitre 10 Cup seasonwith North Harbour and going into the semifinals remained the competition’s top points-scorer (119 from 10 games) – is a talented enough footballer who should be deserving of a Super Rugby start anyway.
He is likely to walk straight into the No 10 jersey at the Chiefs and be tasked with steering the ship back on course following last year’s winless Super Rugby Aotearoa
I probably didn’t get the minutes I would have liked at the Highlanders this year.’ BRYN GATLAND
campaign.
With fullback now considered DamianMcKenzie’s proper home, Gatland will vie for the first-five role with 21-year-old Kaleb Trask, who notched nine games as Cruden’s deputy this year in his debut season.
Trask, who is signed with the Chiefs until 2023, has been in hot provincial form himself, albeit at fullback, with Bay of Plenty having the Blues’ Otere Black in their ranks this year.
Having been a star in his days with Hamilton Boys’ High
School – capped off by a nationalchampionship-winning drop goal in 2013 – Gatland played one provincial season for Waikato in 2015 before moving to Harbour.
After being signed as temporary injury cover for the Crusaders early in 2017, it was just amonth later he made his Super Rugby debut for the Blues, but after dropping down the pecking order in 2018, he then headed to the Highlanders with the departure of Lima Sopoaga.
Again, though, his game-time turned out to be limited, thanks not only to a severe foot injury halfway through the 2019 campaign, but also the emergence of Josh Ioane, and hewould have been buoyed by the opportunity for increased
minutes at the Chiefs.
In an interview last month Gatland said he was assessing ‘‘a few options’’ as to where he played his Super footy next year.
‘‘I probably didn’t get the minutes I would have liked at the Highlanders this year,’’ he said. ‘‘The ones I did have I thought were pretty good, and unfortunately I didn’t get any more.’’
Gatland’s kicking game is first-class – both in general play and off the tee – and he has an innate ability to steer a team around the park, while also being a calm head and standing up in clutch moments.
Ironically, no better example of that was in his first game back from that foot injury, when he came off the bench and sunk his dad’s Chiefs 28-27 in Dunedin, thanks to his coolly-slotted late drop goal. Maybe that was enough for dad to ensure that doesn’t happen to him again in a hurry.
After a bye, the Chiefs open on March 5 inHamilton against theHighlanders.