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The 'special' World Cup prediction Gatland has made about Wales
By PA
Warren Gatland has backed Wales to do “something pretty special” at the Rugby World Cup in France. The Welsh face England in their opening tournament warm-up game on Saturday after winning just two of the last 10 Tests.
A miserable Guinness Six Nations campaign produced a fifth-placed finish, while player contracts, financial issues throughout professional rugby in the country and the threat of a players’ strike significantly compounded matters.
Wales have also dropped to ninth in World Rugby’s official rankings and seen talismanic figures like Alun Wyn Jones, Justin Tipuric and Rhys Webb all retire from international rugby since the end of last season.
Head coach Gatland, though, has delivered an upbeat message ahead of Wales’ preparation games against England home and away, plus South Africa, before a tough World Cup opener against Fiji in Bordeaux on September 10.
Asked if he relished Wales being written off, Gatland said: “Yeah. Continue to do it because it’s only going to make us stronger. I'm really excited. I’m telling you this team will do something pretty special.
“If I look back on the Six Nations and all the things that were going on, I probably needed to let things unfold a bit and not be as direct or demanding as I might have normally been.
"The fact that things have settled down and a lot of new players have come in, the way that we have been so much more accountable for how we do things and demanding standards, that has been brilliant.
“As a group, we are in a good place. I promise you now, we will surprise some people.”
Wales’ training squad experienced punishing training camps in Switzerland and Turkey during the past month and Gatland will parade three news caps – Max Llewellyn, Corey Domachowski and Keiron Assiratti – among a starting line-up captained for the first time by flanker Jac Morgan.
“I have got to say that I am incredibly impressed with this group of players in the last eight weeks,” Gatland added. “They are in great shape physically. I couldn’t have asked for any more.
“They have been to the well and had to dig deep with everything we have put them through. They have been absolutely brilliant. We have had tough sessions, but come out the other side. The hardest thing is naming the 33 (final World Cup squad). There will be some real tough calls.”
Gatland, meanwhile, says he can see a likeness between 23-year-old Morgan and Sam Warburton, who was appointed Wales skipper ahead of the World Cup in 2011 at the age of 22.
Other leadership candidates will also be assessed during the warm-up schedule, but Morgan has the first opportunity to put down a marker.
“He is a fantastic individual and he is respected in the group. He has got a big future for Wales,” Gatland said. “He doesn’t say a lot or talk a lot, a bit like Sam Warburton. He does his talking out there and leads by example.
“We went to Turkey last week and took a referee out there with us to do some live stuff. One of the comments from him [the referee] was that some of the interaction from Jac was really impressive. He was asking good, positive questions and that was probably an indication that we had made the right call.”
Gatland, meanwhile, has also hailed full-back Leigh Halfpenny, who will become the ninth player to win 100 Wales caps when he runs out against England.
“He will be leading the side out,” Gatland added. “He is driven and he is a role model for everyone coming through who looks up to him.
“If you are talking about role models as a professional, you could not get a harder worker than Leigh Halfpenny in terms of how he prepares. The analysis, training and recovery. He is the ultimate professional.”
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Latest Comments
Well that sux.
Go to commentsLike I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
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