No laughing matter for Wales as players get a chance for redemption
THERE is a story about how legendary Wales second-row Brian Thomas had decreed that “nobody is to smile” before a Neath Welsh Cup semi-final against Cardiff at the Brewery Field.
When ‘The Ayatollah’ spoke people tended to listen. Sure enough, they did listen back in 1972.
And the straight faces everywhere tactic, with the team picture looking as if a collection of Mafia hitmen are about to clock on for the afternoon shift, was deemed to have worked.
With not a smile to be seen on the faces of the players, Neath duly destroyed Gareth Edwards and Barry John that day in Bridgend before dishing out the same treatment to the Llanelli pack in the showpiece final at the National Stadium.
And the relevance of this to the Celtic tete-a-tete at the Principality Stadium tonight?
Well, let’s just say it would be a surprise if there were too many smiling Welsh faces before kick-off against Ireland in the RBS 6 Nations encounter in Cardiff.
For Rob Howley has given his players a chance to redeem themselves and in so doing he is unlikely to have said: “Chaps, I want you to go out there and have some fun. Let’s not take this one too seriously.”
More likely is that Welsh players will emerge from the tunnel with steam coming out of their nostrils, ready to unleash an adrenalin-fuelled effort of the sort they tend to reserve for dates with blokes in white jerseys.
But fail badly again, 13 days after the second-half implosion in Scotland, and Wales’s hopes of avoiding another World Cup pool of death will be imperilled. Maybe Rob Howley’s hopes of succeeding Warren Gatland will be jeopardised as well, though it is never easy to tell with the Welsh Rugby Union.
But even at this stage it seems safe to say Howley can count himself fortunate that he isn’t operating in less tolerant times.
Think back to 1988 and Tony Gray being shown the door just months after leading Wales to a Triple Crown and being named European coach of the year.
At another point, Wales had four full-time coaches in four years, with two caretakers. The suspicion was that some of them didn’t even get to see out their tickets in the WRU’s long-stay car park.
But long gone are the days when itchy trigger fingers seemed to permanently afflict some in the union hierarchy.
Indeed, it is a sobering thought that the Warren Gatland regime has overseen just shy of one in six of the matches Wales have ever played — 113 out of 691 games.
At times, it feels like they might have been around for the Bob Deans did-he-or-didn’t-he-score-a-try incident in the 1905 Test against New Zealand.
Their longevity is partly due to the credit Gatland built up in his early years as Wales coach, allied to the union’s concern, rooted in history, about the ruinous effects of instability.
Whatever, Howley needs a good result.
For if Wales lose, the pressure will only be heightened for the game with France in Paris next week.
Two damaging setbacks and it could be group-of-death here we come, and an increased likelihood that Welsh players could be racing home the postcards from Japan in 2019.
Howley has evidently written off Scotland as being a bad day for his side, the type most teams have every now and then.
His belief is that the real Wales showed themselves against England a couple of weeks earlier. Belief and reality are about to collide, and the coach needs an alignment between the two.
The probability is he will get a reaction.
But players can climb to emotional highs only so many times during a season: the challenge is to develop an all-round game that can make a side dangerous without having to headbutt dressing room walls before kickoff.
Creativity, or the lack of it, has been the big issue for this Welsh team.
There is a memorable passage in the book Fever Pitch where Nick Hornby compares Brazil’s play at the 1970 football World Cup to James Bond’s Aston Martin car, with Carlos Alberto and Co offering the planet its first colour-TV glimpse of ejector-seat football.
Pele’s shot at goal from inside his own half, the outrageous dummy that saw him go one way and the ball go the other…these were cutting-edge additions to the way the round-ball game was being played.
Wales once played Aston Martin, ejector-seat rugby.
But of late it has been more a Ford Escort-with-a-dent-in-the-passengerdoor type of game.
Rhys Webb and Liam Williams have provided occasional flashes of inspiration, but it is an early contender for understatement of the year to say more of the backs need to deliver.
Are the right people in place to create space and open defences? The jury remains out. Certainly, many supporters are disenchanted at the failure to blood any of the uncapped players who were included in Howley’s Six Nations squad.
Steff Evans is arguably the player with biggest cause for complaint, given the failure of Alex Cuthbert and George North to find form and consistency.
Meantime, Sam Davies – a chap who does know how to play ejector-
seat rugby – has to bide his time as he waits for a first Test start.
And the reluctance to utilise Liam Williams at full-back, where he prefers to play and is most dangerous, is in some eyes another opportunity missed in terms of increasing the threat Wales pose in broken play.
Ireland have the incentive of a title to chase and Cardiff will hold few fears.
They will look to attack Wales in the scrums and they have a front five who are partial to more than a bit of ballcarrying, while there is top quality in the back row and an elite half-back pairing in Conor Murray and Johnny Sexton, plus a balance of dash and bash in the backs.
Joe Schmidt’s men are deserved favourites with the bookmakers, but Wales’s head coach and players have much to prove.
Their plight has long gone beyond being a laughing matter.
It is time Wales delivered a serious performance.