Warren Gatland teases his next move, takes pop at Jones' England

Warren Gatland has opened up about his potential future beyond the expiry of his current deal with the Chiefs, while he also criticised England in the wake of their loss to Argentina last Sunday. Eddie Jones is contracted through to the end of the 2023 World Cup in France and won’t look to continue with the English beyond that tournament, but pressure has ratcheted up on the Australian following the fifth defeat for his team in their nine matches in 2022.

Gatland, the three-time Lions head coach who spent twelve years in charge of Wales, is currently working in his native New Zealand as director of rugby at the Super Rugby Pacific Chiefs. However, that contract has less than a year to run and the Kiwi is currently in the UK on a speaking tour and doing some TV punditry on the Autumn Nations Series.

He has also made a guest appearance on this week’s Evening Standard Rugby Podcast with Lawrence Dallaglio, his former captain when he coached Wasps to Premiership and European glory in the early 2000s.

Asked by Dallaglio what his immediate future holds, Gatland said: “I have kind of got the itch again. My contract is with the New Zealand Rugby Union so I am contracted to them with the Chiefs and that finished around World Cup time.

“I have never had an agent from a rugby perspective. I have always been a great believer in what will be. I have done my own contracts and thought this is what I am worth and what my value is… To be honest I have had a few approaches and a couple from Japan and people talking and a couple of other teams as well. Something will come along.

“I am not actively looking. I haven’t got someone out there actively looking for me. I am not worried about that and I know the right thing will come along and I will be excited about it.” Asked which team he would love to coach, he quipped: “Probably France at the moment.”

The show also reviewed last weekend’s Autumn Nations Series action and quizzed about what the problem is with England at the moment, Gatland said: ”I’m not too sure. The one thing about the message I always tried to do in Wales and I found this to be really helpful was to control the narrative. Let people know what you are thinking, what my plan is for these campaigns. I can’t see that with England. I’m looking from the outside and I am not 100 per cent sure what the plan is.

“They picked a really big team and tried to overpower Argentina with the size, but Argentina aren’t really the sort of team you can do that to because they hang in there. They are not going to beat you by 30, 40 points but they will stay in the fight and they will fight for scraps and stay in the arm wrestle and do enough to win. I am not sure the direction they are going in at the moment and what they are actually trying to achieve.”