Welsh team is hidden behind wall of silence
There used to be a time when the attendance at a Wales practice match outnumbered those at most club matches across England. The fans would pour through the ever-open gates, often as many as a couple of thousand on Sunday mornings at Aberavon beach and again on Thursday afternoons at the South Wales Police ground in Bridgend.The Pied Piper superstars of the Seventies came to expect them and the more, the merrier.
Wales then truly were a team of the people, always visible and accessible. They gave autographs and interviews to anyone who asked and took Sunday lunch in the café of a leisure centre.
It never occurred to anyone that the most revered of all Welsh teams needed protection from the public. The notion of putting Gareth, Barry, Benny, Grav, Swerve, JPR, JJ and The Duke behind a security screen was preposterous.
Times change. A wall has been built around ‘Team Wales’ under the current management which goes to show how far they have changed, the open-house of yesteryear long gone.
The brickwork had all been done well before Donald Trump hit upon the same idea. Whether it’s designed to keep out illegal immigrants or nosy reporters, the principle is the same.
The danger in Wales’ case is that it can lead to a perceived disconnect from those who pay their wages, the fans and, in particular, those who feel shortchanged by the autumn series just ended. They see their team falling behind England and Ireland and, not unreasonably, would like some straight answers to straight questions.
Far from being accepted as part of the job, straight questions are frowned upon. That was never better illustrated than in the immediate aftermath of New Zealand’s exhilarating win against a battling Wales two years ago.
When the BBC’s Sonja McLaughlan asked Warren Gatland about his then record of one win over the Southern Hemisphere in six years, the head coach gave a terse reply and disappeared out of camera shot looking far from pleased. At that point, Ms McLaughlan found herself shamefully harangued by a senior WRU official.
Nor was that an isolated case. The other week another reporter was berated as ‘unprofessional’ for politely asking another coach a legitimate question about the Lions.
Rob Howley, the interim head coach, dismisses the media as ‘white noise’, adamant that he tends not to ‘read or listen to anything like that’.
Sir Clive Woodward claimed he made a point of reading all the papers, not necessarily to find reason to pick a fight with a journalist and phone him at six in the morning, as was his wont, but to keep in tune with public opinion.
Eddie Jones, rarely misses a trick in that respect but he also uses it to lighten the mood. “Someone wrote in the paper that James Haskell has poor hands,’’ a poker-faced Jones said of the England flanker at a Press conference. “Not true. James Haskell has terrible hands…’’
It would be hard to imagine something like that coming out of a Welsh Press conference although, heaven knows, they could do with a little light relief. The opening shambles against the Wallabies set the tone.
Howley’s haunted look at what was unfolding beneath him said it all as did Shaun Edwards’ impression of a man sitting on top of Mount Vesuvius. At least the longest of months ended with Howley in smiles and nobody would have begrudged him that considering what he had gone through.
His insistence that he had ‘loved every minute of it’ seemed hard to believe. Gethin Jenkins, a man so noted for his hilarity that his own team refer to him as ‘Mr Grumpy,’ strengthened the suspicion that ‘enjoyment’ had become the new buzzword by talking about ‘an enjoyable few weeks’.
As for the crowds watching Wales’ practice matches, they disappeared a while back, not because they lost interest but because they ran into a brick wall. Nobody’s welcome any more but then the same goes for the other countries.