Wales coach always gets teams to hit high note on big occasions

Warren Gatland has the credentials to step up as a replacement for his Australian opponent

Success shapes so much, notably the bottom line at England HQ, which has been battered recently

Warren Gatland will have his game face on this Saturday at the Principality Stadium, wholly intent on crafting victory over England in a seminal Guinness Six Nations championship match. The gaze of the former Waikato hooker will be focused entirely on events that take his team into the hot-house atmosphere of the stadium as evening draws in and the decibel level rises. It will be a theatrical backdrop, suitably so on many levels, one of which is that the sporting drama could yet prove to be instructive as England ponder their own future post-eddie Jones.

Could Gatland be coaching England in next year’s Six Nations championship?

It’s a moot question. Gatland’s 11-year association with Wales is definitely coming to an end after the World Cup in Japan. That much is clear. Jones’s precise future is more open-ended. The Australian is contracted until 2021 with his prime responsibility after events in Japan to help with the succession planning and nurturing of a new head coach.

It is only right that Gatland should be under consideration at some juncture. Saturday’s match has enough spice and intrigue in its own right as the two sets of players give it the full metal jacket, fury with finesse. Yet the coaching head-to-head will be in play somewhere. Some of this might be pantomime fare, the noises-off stuff that makes for sharp headlines and knockabout copy. It ought not to impact on professional sportsmen yet somewhere within their own psyches, tuning in to the mood music and steeling themselves to be on-point for 4.45pm on Saturday, players will be hardened and uplifted by the messages emanating from their coaches.

Jones has already set the tone. The final whistle had barely blown on a thumping England victory over France when Jones was pointedly referencing the next fixture, that against “the greatest ever Wales team”. That the statistics indicate such an elevated state of affairs – a record-equalling 11 victories in a row already notched on the belt – is one thing but even the most rudimentary awareness of history, allied to the necessary grey matter to apply some worthwhile judgement, would tell you it is nonsense. No one in the Wales camp would lay claim to it either.

Gatland’s record with Wales is highly commendable, with two Grand Slams to his name during his tenure at a time when the regions have been spectacularly unproductive in Europe. His forte, as he has shown twice with the British and Irish Lions, is to get players together in a short space of time to deliver a performance. If there is one key aspect of the respective coaches’ input to Saturday’s outcome, it is this ability of Gatland to get teams to hit the high notes on the big occasions.

The Lions did it in the third Test in Sydney in 2013 when the series was on the line and the chorus of critical disapproval was at its shrillest following the decision to drop Brian O’driscoll.

There was even more acute pressure in New Zealand two years ago when the New Zealand Herald in a pots-and-kettles stunt depicted Gatland as a clown on its front page. The Lions won the second Test in Wellington and came away with a draw in Auckland the following week.

There is no doubt that Gatland should be on the RFU’S radar as acting CEO Nigel Melville acknowledged in December. Jones himself has proven the value of having a tried-and-trusted practitioner in the role. International rugby is an unforgiving arena. It is not a rehearsal. There is little or no scope for development, little slack to be cut when results take a dip. There used to be an attraction in appointing home-grown talent but those days have faded, if not gone entirely. Success shapes so much, notably the bottom line at Twickenham, a mark that has taken a battering over the last couple of years.

Gatland’s record is its own testimony. Any future employer would, however, need to gauge his energy and enthusiasm levels for another (minimum) four-year project. There would be legitimate questions to raise, too, as to whether he is too closely associated too recently with Welsh rugby for there to be a sense of a new start in England.

What is to relish is that two top-end coaches will be using every last morsel of their knowhow over the next five days to ensure that Saturday’s showdown lives up to its billing.