SPORT Wales not playing catch-up – Gatland
WARREN Gatland insisted Wales are not lagging behind the other home nations in the race to peak for the World Cup as he shuffled an increasinglydepleted playing roster for tomorrow’s final autumn series match against South Africa.
Critics have accused the New Zealander and his management team of being too slow to embrace a more fluid attacking game featuring a ballplaying No.12, saying the process should have started immediately after the 2015 World Cup quarter-final exit.
But Gatland brushed off the notion that a major gap has opened up between Wales, and England, Ireland and Scotland.
He claimed Wales changed to a more fluid style on the 2016 tour of New Zealand – this despite saying the exact opposite in an interview last month in which he argued any change had been imagined by people who were ‘dumb.’
At his final pre-match briefing of this current campaign, Gatland spoke about the five changes he made to his starting XV to face the Boks from the defeat to New Zealand, which were due to either injury or unavailability.
Scarlets’ Aled Davies starts at scrum-half, Kiwi-born Hadleigh Parkes makes his debut at inside-centre and hooker Kristian Dacey, tighthead prop Scott Andrews and second row Cory Hill come into the forward pack.
They replace the benched Rhys Webb, unavailable Owen Williams and the injured Ken Owens, Leon Brown and Jake Ball respectively.
Forgotten Ospreys prop Rhodri Jones has been drafted in among the replacements to cover the front row, while there is a first involvement of the autumn for Rhys Patchell.
Responding to the question about having been left behind by Six Nations rivals, Gatland said: “We said in 2016 in New Zealand that we changed the way we played. If you look at the first two Tests against the All Blacks and the number of passes we put together... the second Test we put 180 passes together.
“We’re conscious of what we’re trying to do in terms of the way we play, but probably the main difference is we have picked a ball-playing 12 which is different to what we’ve had in the past.
“Sometimes that’s about the players at your disposal at a given time. We don’t have a big playing base so don’t always have the players to fill a way you might want to go.
“This hasn’t been a process from two weeks ago, it’s been something we’ve been working towards for the last couple of years.
“The game is not about changing, it’s about evolving. We don’t feel we’re a year or two years behind anyone else.” L Halfpenny (Scarlets); H Amos (Dragons), S Williams (Scarlets), H Parkes (Scarlets), S Evans (Scarlets); D Biggar (Ospreys), A Davies (Scarlets); R Evans (Scarlets), K Dacey (Cardiff Blues), S Andrews (Cardiff Blues, on loan Bath), C Hill (Dragons), A W Jones (Ospreys, capt), A Shingler (Scarlets), J Navidi (Cardiff Blues), T Faletau (Bath). Replacements: E Dee (Dragons), W Jones (Scarlets), R Jones (Ospreys), S Davies (Cardiff Blues), D Lydiate (Ospreys), R Webb (Ospreys), R Patchell (Scarlets), O Watkin (Ospreys).
Gatland has previously cited concern over making the top eight of the rankings for the World Cup draw last spring as having been a barrier to experimentation and the development of a new style.
Wales just scraped into the eighth and final position which guaranteed them a seeding for the 2019 tournament despite dropping three places between the start and finish of a 2017 Six Nations that saw them finish last but one in the tournament table.
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