Roberts set to go up against Gatland
JAMIE Roberts is set to come up against his former Wales boss Warren Gatland this week when Australian side Waratahs, who Roberts joined earlier this year as he relocated Down Under, face Gatland’s Chiefs on Friday.
Gatland was head coach of the New Zealand Super Rugby side but took up a director of rugby role after his sabbatical with the British and Irish Lions.
The Waratahs - who have won five games in eight this year are fifth in the table, one point ahead of Gatland’s team - play the Gallagher Chiefs on Friday in the first of six games in the Melbourne Super Round and they believe they will be more competitive than they were last year, especially given the Chiefs are missing All Blacks lock Brodie Retallick, centre Anton Lienert-Brown and first five-eighths Josh Ioane, while half-back Brad Weber is also touch and go.
Coach Darren Coleman told the Sydney Morning Herald: “If we can build our team on defence and toughness, you are in there with a fighting chance.”
Former Otago prop turned respected coach Steve “Cumby” Cumberland has died suddenly aged 57 in Japan at the weekend, where he had coached for more than a decade after spells as an assistant with the Highlanders and Otago in New Zealand.
The New Zealand Herald reports that former Otago teammate and fellow Japan-based coach Greg Cooper said of the Kobe Steelers forwards coach: “He was an intelligent, caring and fiercely loyal man. I will miss him. His family was his life, but his friends were a part of his extended family.”
Cumberland’s senior provincial career started with Manawatu – he played 25 games from 1985 to 1987 – before he headed south. He played 81 games for a popular and entertaining Otago team from 1988 to 1993, an era capped by a breakthrough national championship title in 1991.