Warren Gatland stopped short of saying that he regretted his return to Wales, but the tone of his comments could hardly have been more plain. “When I came into the Six Nations, I had no idea,” the Welsh head coach said to the BBC of the problems that have beset him and his side during a frightful start to his second stint in charge. “I didn’t realise a lot of the things that were going on and the issues that were behind rugby and the squad and the players. At the time if I had known, I would have made a different decision and probably gone somewhere else.”
When the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) re-appointed the popular New Zealander last December, the hope was of a quick fix, a proven short-term schemer the right man to reinvigorate a side that had been drifting towards a World Cup disaster under Wayne Pivac. Gatland was the proverbial safe pair of hands to guide the team out of choppy waters.
