Warren Gatland admitted on Wednesday he would have turned down the Wales manager’s job if he had known at the time the extent of the crisis in which Welsh rugby was plunged.
‘When I arrived for the Six Nations I had no idea’ ‘all that was going on and the issues with rugby, the team and the players’, Gatland claimed on a BBC podcast .
“At the time, if I had known, I would have made a different decision and probably gone somewhere else,” he admitted.
The New Zealander returned in December 2022 in place of Wayne Pivac, sacked after a disastrous year. He had already held the reins of the Leek XV between 2007 and 2019. He then won four victories in the Six Nations Tournament, including three Grand Slams, and played in two World Cup semi-finals in 2011 and 2019.
But his return did not produce the desired electroshock and the Welsh have won only one victory in the Tournament this year, a few months before the World Cup in France and while the federation (WRU) and the clubs are stuck in a series of crises.
Allegations of sexism, racism and homophobia in economically struggling WRU are being independently investigated, and international players have threatened to strike mid-tournament to change their contracts federal.
For Warren Gatland, past successes have “hid the flaws” of Welsh rugby. “It is surely for the best that they have come to light and that there is a chance to focus on the things that need to be fixed,” he said, believing that “it is a good opportunity. to put things flat on a lot of things”.
Since the Tournament, Alun Wyn Jones, Justin Tipuric and Rhys Webb have retired from international football, a new headache for Gatland before the World Cup. Wales will face Australia, Fiji, Georgia and Portugal in Group C.
But, he pointed out, poor performances ‘keep us under the radar’, and the Welsh love to react by being ‘with their backs to the wall’.