How Mr Fix-it Phillips ensures Wales tours go smoothly
“DO you want me to get them to turn that music off?”
Those were the first words that Wales team manager Alan Phillips said as he sat down to conduct a rare interview with WalesOnline at Olivos Rugby Club in Buenos Aires.
Because that’s what he does. He makes sure everything is just right.
“I’m a facilitator for the players and coaches,” he says.
“The food has to be right, the bed has to be right, the pillows and stuff like. It’s all crucial. We give them no excuse.
“We do everything to make sure that nothing inconveniences the team. We create the best environment that we can for them to succeed.”
Phillips is the man who heads up the logistical planning of Wales’ tours and is the person tasked with ensuring things run smoothly when they’re on the ground.
Is there a more unheralded job in professional sport? Possibly not.
These trips are months in the planning but the environment often changes and it keeps Phillips on his toes. Especially in the country like Argentina.
In fact, this interview would never have taken place 25 minutes away from Wales’ team hotel, had their original plan not been turned on its head.
“When we came out here a few weeks ago, we were planning on training where the Super Rugby team trains,” Phillips explained.
“Then a week ago I had a video from our liaison officer saying they’d had floods here and we couldn’t train there. That training facility was nine minutes from the hotel and the one we’re using now is 25.”
You have to be adaptable in this line of work, but more importantly, you have to be organised.
Plans might have to change, but they need to be there in the first place and months of work are put in before the summer comes around.
Usually ahead of these trips, Phillips will start his planning 11 months out because ‘that’s when you get the best deals with the airlines and you can make sure you get the 50-odd seats that you need to keep everyone together.’
That’s a luxury that he hasn’t been afforded with this trip.
Wales were always coming to Argentina this summer, but the build up to this tour was not without its uncertainty.
In fact, after 16 years in the job, Phillips says this has been the most challenging one to date.
“This trip has been completely different because first of all they told us we were playing in Patagonia and Santa Fe, then they changed their mind after we’d already committed to come out and do a recce in January, so we had to cancel that.
“Then the game against South Africa was thrown in, so it’s been messy all the way through.
“We can’t get everyone on the same flight going home this weekend, the group weren’t all sat together coming down from Washington.
“It’s been a difficult one, more so than any other trip I’ve done.”
The preliminary trip was done just 10 weeks before Wales were due to touch down in the United States and it was a whistle-stop tour of the numerous destinations they would visit. But at least he had company on this one. The former British and Irish Lions hooker usually does the trips on his own, but this time Wales boss Warren Gatland came along for the ride.
The point of these trips is to identify the ideal training facilities and hotels. What they’re looking for is relatively straightforward – familiar surroundings.
“We want something similar to The Vale Resort (Wales’ HQ just outside Cardiff),” states Phillips.
“We want a team room that is big enough to house all the departments, you’re in there day in, day out and it needs to be somewhere you can see everybody and connect with everybody.
“In terms of food, we bring our own chef, Andre, with us to make sure we’re getting the right things.” But there is more to consider. The Argentine Rugby Union have organised Tests in San Juan and Santa Fe this summer. To say those areas are quiet would be putting it mildly.
Therefore, Wales have made the decision to base themselves in Buenos Aires and travel out to the Test venues on the Thursday before the matches.
“We’re at the end of a long season and the players’ mental freshness is more important than the physical freshness,” Phillips explains. “You need to keep them interested and make sure there are plenty of things around.
“There are nice coffee shops here, they can go to some shows, there are different things for them to do on their days off, something that stimulates them and the two places that we’re playing in wouldn’t stimulate them at all.
“Problem is, they haven’t got a lot of money here. That’s why we’re going out to places like San Juan and Santa Fe.
“They haven’t got the rugby facilities for a tier one international team.
“The Jaguares (Argentina’s Super Rugby franchise) don’t go and play in any of these places, they just work out of Buenos Aires.
“So we had to make a decision to say we’re coming back to Buenos Aires (from San Juan) and then move on to Santa Fe on Thursday because there’s not a lot to do in these places.”
As a result of that decision, Wales will catch seven flights in the space of four weeks and they don’t travel light.
The travelling party is as swollen as 58 people and they haul around 3.8 tonnes of equipment – that includes but is not limited to analysis servers, cameras to record training, laptops, water bottles, tackle bags, balls, supplements, medical supplies, massage tables and kit for three matches.
On top of that, each player carries a kit bag and a personal suitcase and each member of management has two suitcases as well as carry-on baggage. Wales haven’t spent more than four days in one location and it’s estimated that their equipment is packed away into around 45-50 boxes.
That’s an almighty logistical operation.
When you’re carrying that much baggage, you can’t just walk up to the check-in desk like your average Joe. Especially in an airport like San Juan that is so small it boasts just one runway.
“Things have to be arranged in advance. You get the luggage to the airport in front of the team so the players don’t have to arrive at the airport so early.”
Wales’ travel around Argentina hasn’t been easy to plan, either.
During these tours, it’s customary for the home nation to pick up the tab for internal travel.
In order to keep costs at a minimum, Gatland’s men were required to catch the same chartered flight as the Argentina side last Sunday.
They dropped Los Pumas off in Santa Fe before flying back to Buenos Aires on Sunday. A minor inconvenience and nothing more.
“I’ve done that here three times now,” Phillips remarks. “It’s not big deal for the players, though.”
Then for the upcoming final Test of the trip, they were told that they were only going to be given two buses home from Santa Fe this weekend, a six-hour coach journey
The reason they gave us was the crew were tired and they’d worked too many hours
Alan Phillips on a cancelled flight in Samoa