Blame the men at the top of WRU
LEICESTER City, having fired their manager a few days ago after a Premier League run of five straight defeats, beat Liverpool 3-1 with a caretaker manager in charge. This scenario seems to repeat itself season after season in the Premier League, admittedly not always in quite such dramatic circumstances as in Claudio Ranieri’s case. The team underperforms, the chairman pledges undying support for the manager, the manager gets sacked. Individual players’ poor performances hardly get a mention, it always seems to be the manager who gets it in the neck. The captain doesn’t get a look in. Welsh Rugby and rugby in general, for all I know, is completely different. Individual players get pilloried out of the game, the coach is questioned about selection or tactics but his position never seems in doubt.
So why the different cultures? Which is right? Firing the coach often seems to bring about a dramatic change in fortunes in football, but is rarely seen in rugby.
This year is the “qualifying year” for the next RWC. Any rugby nation would be disappointed if their coach was unavailable from accident or illness in this year of all years, but would work through it with the assistant coach.
Not Wales, though. In the most critical season outside World Cup year, they give their coach a year off! Why? What does Welsh rugby have to gain from this? They put an assistant in, who incidentally appears never to have held a chief coach position in senior rugby (I stand to be corrected) and tells him to get on with it. Like the players, he has limited time to perform, and is likely to make decisions based on the knowledge that he probably has just one season to prove himself.
All this begs the question, “Who gave Warren Gatland time off to go and play with the Lions?” The answer – the men at the top in Welsh rugby. Should Wales fail to make the top table at the next World Cup, it is the decision makers at the top who will be to blame, not the players who literally put their necks on the line for us. The individuals in the Welsh XV, or perhaps the Welsh XXIII, are indeed “Lions led by fools”. Good luck to them in their next two matches in their quest to rescue a situation thrust upon them by their elders.
Tim Johns Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire