"This is what we’ll be doing. It works. And if you’re not willing to jump on the train, you won’t be playing in my team.”
It was Warren Gatland speaking, when he met Wales’ players for the first time after taking over as national head coach in 2008.
The Gareth Jenkins regime had ended abruptly amid the carnage of the 2007 World Cup, with Fiji knocking Wales out of the tournament at the pool stage after the Welsh players allowed themselves to be drawn into a game of running rugby against the world-renowned masters of running rugby. “It was idiocy in the extreme,” summed up Adam Jones in his book, Bomb.
SIGN UP: Get the latest rugby headlines sent straight to your inbox for free with our daily newsletter
“The messages were coming onto the pitch from the touchine. Boys! Calm down! Tighten things up, stop playing into their hands.”
The pleas were to no avail. Wales lost 38-34 and Jenkins paid the price, with his removal as head coach the next day being ruthless and also needlessly abrupt, denying a proud man even a shred of dignity. But that’s another story.
This was a month or two on with Gatland directing operations.
Authority was having its say, and people listened.
He had already put his cards on the metaphorical table by outlining what he had in store for his players: “I will say to them: ‘Imagine there is a mirror — when you come off the field I want you to look into it and say: ‘I tried really hard today.’
“If someone gives everything, that is fine.
“At times in training, we will put them under stress and pressure.
“I will try to break some players physically and mentally to find out how tough they really are, and I am going to let them know that I will be trying to break them.
“There’s no excuse for a player pulling on an international jersey and not dying for the cause; if he’s holding something back, he does not deserve to be there.”
Happy days are here again?
Not every Welsh player would have felt as much at that point.
But it did work out in that first Gatland season
Fifteen years ago this week, on January 14, 2008, the Kiwi named his first Wales squad for the Six Nations.
There were only 28 names in the panel, a new captain and an eye-opening inclusion at openside flanker. Colin Charvis and Michael Owen, who had been superb players for Wales, didn’t feature, but there was room for a 21-year-old who was being seen as a wing or full-back. Went by the name of Jamie Roberts, who confessed to being “over the moon just to be in the squad”. Gavin Henson was also involved after being left out of the World Cup squad months earlier. There were pronouncements on selection policy, warnings and an expression of amazement that England had failed to pick up Shaun Edwards. You can read about Henson's new life here.
Hurricane Warren had blown in.
Here are some of the highlights and other lowlights that flowed from that first squad announcement.
Who will win the Six Nations? Cast your vote now
The selection shock
Martyn Williams was done as an international rugby player.
Fiji at the 2007 World Cup was his last game for Wales, he had decided.
All the flak that was awaiting at home, the headlines and the hysteria that would follow the humiliation of a pool-stage elimination.
“I rang the missus straight after and said: ‘Book us a holiday. Anywhere,’” he says in Ross Harries’ outstanding book Behind the Dragon: Playing Rugby for Wales.
“I didn’t want to hang around in Wales any longer than I needed to, because I knew how ugly the backlash was going to be.
“I wanted to get the hell outta Dodge.”
Williams went for his break.
But the end for him as a Test player wasn’t to last long.
He continued: “I’d retired from international rugby after the World Cup, so I wasn’t expecting to hear anything. I was 32, and was just hoping to get a few more years of club rugby before I had to hang up my boots.”
But Gatland had other ideas.
The new Wales coach voice-mailed Williams inviting him for a coffee.
“The conversation lasted less than 10 minutes,” said Williams. “He told me I still had a bit to offer and asked me if I’d consider coming back for the Six Nations. He guaranteed me two things: that I’d train harder than I’d ever trained, and that we’d be successful.”
Gatland was to prove as good as his word.
“You couldn’t have had a starker contrast to what had come before. F*****g hell. When Gats and Shaun came in, it was totally, totally different,” said Williams.
The No. 7 didn’t just return for the Six Nations. He enjoyed it so much he would go on to play another 27 times for Wales, in the process cementing his status as one of the country’s finest ever openside flankers.
Throughout the 2008 championship, he performed at his very best, prompting player of the tournament Shane Williams to later reflect that the flame-haired openside flanker might have pipped him for the top-play gong he had won three years earlier. “No-one would have complained had Martyn won it again, because he had another outstanding championship,” said Shane, generously.
The case of Dwayne Peel
Gatland put a stamp on his first squad with the selection of a new captain in Ryan Jones.
He also drafted in Roberts, a young player of undoubted promise but whose best position remained a mystery to all at that point — perhaps even Roberts himself.
Two former captains, Charvis and Owen, weren’t involved.
And there was a warning for Dwayne Peel as reports linked him with a potential move to England. “If players like Dwayne Peel and a few others want to leave, that’s going to make it difficult for them, but not for me,” said Gatland.
History tells Peel started only more more Six Nations match after Gatland took over.
He had been an outstanding player for Wales, winning two man-of-the-match awards in the 2005 Grand Slam campaign and setting a then record as the youngest player to complete 50 caps for his country.
At 26, he was in his prime.
But his days as a frontline option for Wales were effectively over.
Caps off the bench did come his way.
But Gatland put his faith in Mike Phillips.
It was never quite the same for Peel again.
The player who saw his Test career ended after one game under Gatland
The new regime oversaw detailed player assessments in the first weeks.
And the feedback process didn’t leave every player turning cartwheels.
Wales defeated England in their first match but Mark Jones found himself dropped for the next game due to "defensive errors", along with Alix Popham.
Popham, to most eyes one of Wales’ brightest performers in London after replacing the injured Jonathan Thomas, never played for his country again.
What happened?
“I gave away two penalties and that was enough to cost me my place,” Popham later told this writer.
“What can you say? It’s an understatement to say it wasn’t what I would have wanted, but these things happen.
“One of the penalties was awarded against me when I saved a try with a tackle. I thought it better to concede a penalty than seven points. The other was touch and go.
“I played on the edge, as all back rowers tend to play, and there were always going to be a couple of borderline calls that went against me in any game.
“Of course I was disappointed.
“We’d had a great result and I thought I’d made a decent contribution like all the other boys.
“But it was early in his time as coach and I guess Gats wanted to put his stamp on things.
“I was the one who ended up being sacrificed.”
Call that a gracious acceptance of a tough selection call.
Jones? “Our first win at Twickenham for 20 years and I was dropped like a stone,” he later reflected.
Not for long, though.
Boycie, as he was known to all in the Wales set-up, battled back to play in the final three games of that triumphant championship.
The Edwards effect
He’s not with Gatland these days, but what an impact Shaun Edwards made as defence coach in the 2008 campaign and thereafter.
Some Wales players had been reluctant to embrace a rush-defence system under the previous coaching regime.
Edwards wasn’t having any of it.
“We’re a blitzing team. And if you don’t like it, you can f**k off,” he informed the players when meeting them for the first time.
Start as you mean to go on and all that.
.
Postscript
It will be well-nigh impossible for Gatland to replicate the initial impact he made as well coach.
Won’t it?
After all, he is known to players and the public now after his 12-year stint as national coach.
But surprises are never far away when the New Zealand is in charge.
That being the case, seat belts need to be buckled.
We await Tuesday’s squad announcement with interest.
READ MORE:
