RECIPE FOR SUCCESS!

Chef Andre making sure Wales eat like champions

FROM filling up on grassfed steaks, to sugar-free squash, venison sausages to laverbread and smashed avocado... at the World Cup refuelling is a serious business.

The best will play seven of the toughest Tests in the space of six weeks — so filling the bellies of ravenous rugby players is essential.

For many teams, Japan will be a World Cup location out of the culinary comfort-zone too.

So how do you feed a tournament team in the modern age?

Sportsmail enlisted the help of Wales’ Chef Andre Moore — who has worked at Michelin star restaurant Le Gavroche with the Roux brothers, and now travels across the globe with Warren Gatland’s team — to reveal all.

The aim is to fill players with around 3,300 calories a day, depending on training and match- day load, across four or five meals.

On average that includes 250g of protein (800 calories), 450g of carbohydrates (1,600 calories) and 100g of fat (900 calories).

For Wales, breakfast is between six and seven o’clock in the morning — omelettes, porridge, berries and nuts, smoothies and hot items like scrambled eggs, bacon, avocado, smoked salmon all plentiful.

Lunch is always a meat and a fish — a variety of meatballs, pasta, steaks, venison, pork, turkey, seabass and more.

A 4pm snack of cottage pie, wholemeal pizza or lasagne keeps the players going, before ‘themenight’ dinners bring variety.

‘If you have chicken breast and rice every day it becomes boring,’ says Moore, who has been working with the team exclusively since 2015. ‘Quality, the right ingredients and timings have to be spot on.

‘Sometimes they have to force themselves to eat — if they’ve done a hard session it can be difficult to get a whole plate of food down you.

‘We use organic items as much as we can. Occasionally they get secret treats. I use healthy cheesecakes and things like that. That always comes after a hard session or a game.

‘Most of the time we look at lowsugar products, or something as close as possible.

‘We are restricted a bit when we travel, but when we send a briefing across those are the key areas — trying to find as well looked-after a product as possible.’

For this World Cup Moore and his team were discussing menus with their Japan hotels as early as last autumn and had to ship 24 pallets, three for each hotel, eight weeks before the tournament so all supplements would arrive in date and on time for the team. Before the last World Cup, Wales asked Moore (below), who was working at their training base at the Vale Hotel, to cook for them around the world. Not a bad job for a proud Welshman. ‘I’m very lucky!’ adds Moore. ‘I’ve been to New Zealand, Samoa, Argentina, USA and now Japan. They all individually have their highlights and challenges. ‘Samoa was challenging. We brought a chef from Australia and one from Fiji, with us. ‘It was difficult to maintain the consistent quality and standard — if something is over or undercooked you can’t eat it. In Argentina the kitchen was in the basement, and the team-room on the 22nd floor!’ At Wales’ Swiss training camp earlier this summer Moore had to transport barbecue grillers up a gondola to feed the team at 2,000m above sea level — now it’s time for him and Wales to hit the heights on and off the pitch in Japan.