Gatland vows to get Wales on winning trail again

WARREN Gatland faces the biggest challenge of his coaching career after Wales’ alarming demise was confirmed by a first Six Nations wooden spoon for 21 years.

Wales finished seven points adrift of fifthplaced Italy following the Azzurri’s 24-21 victory in Cardiff, which was their 14th defeat in the last 16 Six Nations games.

During his trophyladen first spell in the job between 2008 and 2019, Wales won Six Nations titles, Grand Slams, reached two World Cup semi-finals and were briefly the world’s number one-ranked team.

There are significant mitigating factors behind Wales’ slump, including Dan Biggar, Leigh Halfpenny and now George North retiring from Test rugby and a host of long-term injuries to key players as well as Louis Rees-Zammit quitting rugby to pursue a possible American football career.

But much of their performance against Italy was scarred by schoolboy errors and a chronic lack of composure. Italy were at least 20 points better.

Asked if he was confident of turning things around, Gatland, who revealed he had offered his resignation – which was rejected – to WRU chief executive Abi Tierney immediately after the Italy game. said: “Absolutely. I’ve never shied away from that.

“We have had glimpses where we have been really good in this tournament. We need to do that for longer periods.

“We need to start better in games and make sure we are more accurate.

“Probably the amount of turnovers in those games have allowed opposition teams some easy outs where they haven’t had to play too much rugby and have waited and relied on us shooting ourselves in the foot with some mistakes.

“We just need to win, don’t we. We need to get some confidence and selfbelief, whether that is first of all at the national level, but also at regional level.

“Collectively we have all got a lot of work to do to make sure we can continue to improve the state of Welsh rugby.”