Gatland’s among the targets for England
ENGLAND rugby chiefs have admitted Wales boss Warren Gatland is among their targets to succeed Eddie Jones... and they’re ready to open talks.
The Rugby Football Union are set to step up their search for a new England coach early in the new year with Jones’ contract ending in 2021.
But a disastrous 2019 World Cup for the Red Rose could mean Australian Jones leaves earlier than expected.
Though the RFU’s interim chief executive Nigel Melville has revealed his desire to appoint an Englishman, the former international scrum-half also confirmed Gatland was among their potential targets.
And Melville plans to hold talks with the double Grand Slamwinning coach, who is due to leave his Wales post at the end of next year’s World Cup.
It means discussions will need to take place while Gatland is in the Wales post and possibly during his preparations for the Six Nations.
“I will meet with everyone who is a potential target for us. All our top English coaches will be contacted,” said Melville.
He heaped plaudits on Gatland for the work he has done transforming Wales into a world powerhouse as well as overseeing two successful Lions tours.
“Warren’s a very good coach, but I’m not sure what his plans are,” said Melville.
“I will speak to Warren. We want the best person, don’t we?”
“I am English, this is England, of course it would be great to have an English coach.
“But we have got to have the best coach for the job.
“I will be meeting with everyone who is a potential target for us. And I think a number of our current coaching team could be interested in the role.
“I will speak to Warren [Gatland] and then we’ll see.”
Gatland is the longest-serving coach in Wales’ history and will hand over the reins to Scarlets boss Wayne Pivac after next year’s World Cup. Melville has a huge regard for the Kiwi. He was the man who helped kick-start his coaching career in Britain, appointing Gatland as Wasps coach when taking up the role as their first director of rugby.
IT’S a long time since the journalist Mark Reason wrote: “The job of a Welsh coach is like a minor part in a Quentin Tarantino film: you stagger on, you hallucinate, nobody seems to understand a word you say, you throw up, you get shot.
“Poor old Kevin Bowring has come through the coaching structure, so he knows what it takes...15 more players than Wales have at present.”
Bowring was an able coach who had done well in charge of Wales B.
He had a feel for Wales’ rugby history and culture and wanted his side to play in a way that reflected those traditions.
His problem was he was running the national side during a time when expectations were high and standards across Welsh rugby were low. The game had just turned professional and money was being paid out, but too few players justified their pay.
Rightly or wrongly, some suggested too many of that era saw professionalism solely in terms of how much they could make.
Whatever, it all seems a long, long time ago.
The madness that saw the Welsh Rugby Union wade through seven head coaches in eight years in the 1990s is almost forgotten, along with the fun and games that we were treated to for much of the following decade.
Warren Gatland has helped banish those memories through his ability to absorb pressure, deal with challenges and keep ploughing forward, no matter what the obstacles. He has coached Wales in 109 international matches – or for roughly one in seven of the Tests they have ever played. For the avoidance of doubt, that shows real stickability.
Really, you would have to be 18-plus to have a handle on what life was like with Wales pre-Gatland. The volatility, the swings from euphoria to despair, the chronic instability and the sense that absolutely anything was possible, including the abrupt departure of the national coach. That’s how it was.
To the Welsh Rugby Union’s credit, they gradually came to understand there had to be a better way.
But Gatland’s ability to keep Wales competitive, against a regional backdrop that hasn’t always been funded as it might have been, has been key. His approach was once billed ‘rugby without a smile’ but isn’t a line that tells the whole story.
For Gatland, it’s always been about making the best of what’s at his disposal. When with the Lions he used a double-playmaker system to great effect in the drawn series with New Zealand in 2017, and his use of Gareth
Anscombe at fly-half this term is at odds with his reputation as a conservative coach.
Anyway, he is back in the news after Nigel Melville, who will take over as the Rugby Football Union’s interim chief executive on Christmas Eve, said he would be contacting him about the England head coach position.
“I once employed him. I brought him to Wasps [in 2002],” Melville was quoted by The Times as saying.
“Warren’s a very good coach. I’ll speak to Warren and a number of others.”
Deja vu, anyone? Back in April, the then RFU boss Steve Brown, when specifically asked about Gatland becoming England coach after the next World Cup, said: “We’re not precluding anyone from the list, and we don’t have any agreements to do that. “No one is off limits.
“It’s all to do with whether they fit the profile and the criteria that we’re looking for.”
What is to be said?
Gatland hasn’t commented on the matter, so maybe it is premature for anyone to get over-excited one way or another.
In 2015, he did suggest he would be heading back to New Zealand when his time in Wales finished, telling a
Kiwi radio station: “I’m here until 2019 and the plan for me then is definitely to come home for a period.
“If I was involved in provincial rugby or Super Rugby, that would be great, but if I’m not, I may have to go to the beach for six months or 12 months, put my feet up and take a bit of a break.
“That’s the plan. I’ve been away for long enough.
“I’m 52, so hopefully I’ve got plenty more years left coaching.
“Post-2019, definitely the plan is to come back home to New Zealand.”
But things change, particularly in sport, and it is hard to imagine Gatland spending too long with his feet up. He is a man who is fiercely driven and at 55 he has plenty of time to achieve more – Graham Henry was 10 years older when he won a World Cup with New Zealand.
Undoubtedly, Gatland’s first choice would be to coach the All Blacks.
But if that isn’t possible then he isn’t going to end up on the dole or taking a job with the Dog & Duck, running their Sunday morning XV. The probability is he will either coach a Super Rugby side or another Test team.
So if England sound him out, then the expectation is that he’ll listen. That said, would he be a perfect fit? How much would he enjoy operating as national coach in a rugby culture where clubs are king and demand their pound of flesh from players no matter how big the names?
How much would he relish being the lead profile coach in a country where the premier rugby league is relentless and brutal to the point where some believe it works against the interest of the national team? Of course, no system is perfect. And, for any coach, the prospect of having huge resources and a massive pool of players at his disposal might be appealing.
But, ultimately, it would be up to the chosen one to make it work.
Gatland’s track record suggests he would succeed wherever he pitched up, because he is a winner who knows what it takes.
Might there be perils for Wales if he did hitch up with England?
Yes, in the sense that Gatland knows pretty much all there is to know about this generation of Welsh players and the assumption is he would know how to counter them.
But such is life.
There is so much information and video footage available to coaches nowadays that there are few secrets out there about leading players. When Joe Schmidt was coaching Leinster, he turned up at the post-match press conference after a game with the Ospreys in Swansea and seemed to know that much about the home players it appeared he might have been coaching them.
Always, the challenge is for the coaches to come up with game-plans that outflank the opposition.
Wayne Pivac has done that brilliantly at times with the Scarlets, and it shouldn’t be beyond him to continue that good work with Wales. So perspective is key. Gatland hasn’t said he wants to coach England, and others are certain to be in the frame.
If such events did unfold along the lines suggested, the Red Rose brigade would be getting a world-class operator but life would go on.
It is a professional sport and coaches, like players, come and go.
It has been Wales’ good fortune to have had Gatland coaching them for more than a decade.
But nothing lasts for ever, especially in sport.
The Kiwi is going to resurface somewhere.
Where that is may or may not meet with everyone’s approval this side of the Severn Bridge, but it will not be the end of days – it really won’t.