HOW DEPARTING WILSON HAS MASTERMINDED A DRAMATIC CHANGE IN FORTUNES AT THE BLUES...
IF you were seeking an explanation for the success story at Cardiff Blues of late, you needed have looked no further than the Arms Park clubhouse on Saturday evening.
It was hours after the final whistle of the Challenge Cup semi-final victory over Pau and the majority of the near 12,000 crowd had long since headed home or to various hostelries in the city centre.
But there was still one sizeable group seated together in the downstairs lounge of the clubhouse – the Blues players.
There they were in a circle, enjoying each other’s company, sharing a beer and a joke, and it wasn’t just the players who had faced Pau, but pretty much the entire squad.
Having reported on events at the Arms Park for some 25 years now, it’s a scene I haven’t witnessed too often in the past.
Yes, players have stayed on for a drink and a chat, but they often tend to drift away one by one.
To see an entire squad en masse long after a match is pretty unusual in the modern game and it says a lot about the togetherness of this current group.
That camaraderie and one-for-all spirit has played no small part in the purple patch which has brought 10 victories in the last 11 fixtures in league and Europe.
It was never more evident, nor more crucial than against an enormous Pau team, with the Blues having to dig deep to hold on for a 16-10 win which has secured a Challenge Cup final against Gloucester in Bilbao next month.
Yet what makes that togetherness and the triumphant run all the more remarkable is the background to it.
It’s safe to say few would have predicted such a story unfolding back in September when coach Danny Wilson announced he would be leaving at the end of this season.
His decision followed a turbulent summer where he was forced to release newly-signed Springbok second row Franco van der Merwe due to financial issues.
There was the prospect of other players having to be let go as well to balance the books and it led to some pretty frank and fraught discussions behind the scenes.
It’s fair to say it wasn’t the most harmonious atmosphere and it inevitably had a bearing on Wilson’s decision to leave.
Taking those events into consideration and looking at the playing budget on offer for next season, he opted to move on, ultimately securing a post as Dai Young’s assistant at Wasps.
With the announcement coming so early in the campaign, one did fear just what the impact would be.
There was virtually an entire season to get through and one wondered whether it was really a tenable situation.
So for things to have turned out the way they have is a testament to both Wilson’s professionalism and the way his players have responded to him.
It would have been easy for people to metaphorically down tools and coast through the season, but the exact opposite has been the case.
If anything, the group has got even tighter and there has been a growing determination to send Wilson on his way with some silverware.
So how has he managed to forge such a togetherness, especially given the circumstances?
Well, it’s a process which he feels began some three years ago.
“When I arrived, I talked a lot about a collective leadership model and it’s certainly a big part of what has been successful for us,” he said.
“We have got a seven-man leadership group that we put in place the first week we were here.
“Far from a head coach making all the decisions, we’ve got a collectove approach that works.
“There’s some really good knowledge in the room. Why would you not use Sam Warburton, Gethin Jenkins, Gareth Anscombe?
“Doing things collectively rather than as individuals has worked in other organisations in elite sport and it has certainly worked here.
“There has to be a final call. The buck stops with me as a head coach, therefore I make that final call when I have to.
“We have got negotiable areas and non-negotiable areas and our players and staff have had a huge impact on those negotiable areas, so we make the right decisions, whether it’s the working week, how we train, how we see our cultural environment developing and I am really proud of that, regardless of results.
“If we had lost games and not got to this point, I would still have been very proud of that because I think that’s the foundation that’s needed here and it’s developed into us winning some really big games and having some success.
“So credit to everybody involved.” When Wilson arrived from Bristol in the summer of 2015, things were at a pretty low ebb at the Blues.
Mark Hammett’s reign as coach had lasted just a matter of months ahead of him returning to New Zealand and results had been indifferent for a number of seasons following Dai Young’s departure for Wasps.
But, gradually, Wilson has transformed the team’s fortunes, culminating in them qualifying for the Champions Cup for the first time in five years and reaching a European final.
“It’s a huge mark of where we’ve come from,” he said.
“From the day I walked in, I talked about the three year process that it would take and having some patience and trying to grow our squad from within because we don’t have the money to go out and sign superstars and, as you know, we have had our issues.
“So, to get to this point, with the well-documented difficulties that we’ve had last summer, is a massive, massive achievement and these players need to get recognised for it.”
What has been noticeable during the winning run is how the Blues have found different ways of getting the job done.
Against Ulster, Munster and the Southern Kings, for example, it was their attacking game which came to the fore, then up in Murrayfield it was tactical kicking which undid Edinburgh in the Challenge Cup quarter-final.
And in the European victories over Toulouse, Lyon and now Pau, they have dogged it out against big, powerful French teams, with their defence and physical commitment coming to the fore.
On such occasions, the bond among the players and the desire to do it for each other - and for their coaches - has proved vitally important.
That was especially the case against Pau, where they were under the cosh in the scrum, but still managed to find a way to win via their dominance of the breakdown and heroics in the collisions. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. The scenes in the dressing room afterwards, where Wilson was drenched in beer by the players as they posed for celebratory pictures, and the togetherness long after the final whistle summed up the teamspirit which has taken them to this point.
What you have also seen is an investment in youth over the last three years paying off, with the likes of Jarrod Evans, Seb Davies, Ellis Jenkins, Owen Lane and Tomos Williams taking key roles in the triumph.
It all made for a very satisfying and pretty special occasion on the weekend.
“To win a European semi-final against a French opposition as starstudded as them in front of a packed house, I don’t think it gets much bigger,” said Wilson.
“It would have to be the proudest moment in my time at the Arms Park.
“Even though it wasn’t our prettiest performance, the satisfaction of winning in front of that crowd makes it stand out as the pinnacle.”
However, there is potentially one higher pinnacle to come yet, as Bilbao beckons.