Warren Gatland is turning into the fall guy for all the failings of Welsh rugby | Andy Bull
Coach isn’t making the best out of Wales, but his troubled reign could force the country to confront the state it is inTwo years, four months and a lifetime ago, a Wales team not so very different from the one that will be on the field on Saturday beat the Springboks 13-12 in Bloemfontein.A lot of good Welsh sides have tried and failed to win in South Africa in the 60 years they have been touring.That team, coached by Wayne Pivac, and captained by Dan Biggar, were the first and only one to do it.They might even have won the series except the ifs and buts went against them in the first Test at Loftus Versfeld the previous week, when they lost 32-29 after Damian Willemse kicked a penalty in the final minute.Wales have fallen a long way in very little time.
This time last autumn, or near enough, they were 10-6 up against Argentina at half-time in the quarter-finals of the World Cup,They lost 29-17, and haven’t won a Test since, bar an-end-of-season match against the Barbarians,That’s 11 straight defeats,Almost everyone reckons it will be 12 by the time of the final whistle in their match against South Africa on Saturday,A couple of bookmakers have the Springboks at 100-1 on, which is a consequence of the funereal gloom that surrounds Welsh rugby now.
Gatland has seemed like a sacked man working, if not a dead man walking, ever since he said he was willing to resign if it was in “the best interests of the Welsh game” after they were beaten 52-20 by Australia last Sunday.He’s not convinced it is in their best interest yet, and argues that his team are as good as they could be given the state Welsh rugby is in.He says that the success of the national team has always papered over the cracks in the national game.They were, for the large part of the past decade, the fifth, and most successful Welsh region.Their victories were achieved in spite of the Welsh system, rather than because of it.
There is truth in that,In the three years since South Africa’s clubs joined the United Rugby Championship, only one Welsh team have finished in the top half of the table, when the Ospreys came in eighth last year,The financial uncertainty around the game has caused a player drain at all levels,It’s one thing to lose a player such as Ross Moriarty, a 30-year-old with 54 caps, who is now playing in the French second division, another to lose a player such as Rhys Carré, a 26-year-old with 20 caps who has joined Saracens,Wales have a 25-cap rule (“a rubbish rule”, says Moriarty), which means Carré is not eligible for selection any more.
But most worrying of all is losing someone like Kane James, a talented 20-year-old back-rower who was born and raised in Haverfordwest.James took a scholarship to Sedburgh, was signed by Exeter, who agreed to sponsor him through university on the condition that he made himself available for England, who have picked him for their under-20 team.He’s not the only one.The Welsh centre Gethin O’Callaghan and hooker Kepu Tuipulotu are in the England Under-20 squad too.So Gatland is right when he says, “We need to look at the pathways and the structures.
” Everyone is looking to the union to provide the substance to the strategy it set out in June, when the chief executive, Abi Tierney, said it was their ambition to be “consistently ranked” in the world’s top five.So far it has been silent on exactly how it hopes to achieve it.It still seems to be recovering from the series of recent scandals, including the independent report that found a previous regime at the WRU allowed a “sexist, misogynist, racist, and homophobic” culture to go unchallenged, and a more recent row about the drawn-out contract negotiations for their female players.The sense is that Gatland has climbed back behind the wheel of a car that’s falling apart.But you can still ask whether he’s the right man for the long drive ahead if, at 61, he still has the instincts, the energy, and understanding to make the best of the team.
His complaint that there aren’t any better players out there is an odd one, given that there are at least seven players who were in the squad for that 2022 tour of South Africa who could be playing this weekend, but who haven’t been included in his XV,Tommy Reffell and Ryan Elias are on the bench, but Gareth Anscombe, Kieran Hardy, Nick Tompkins, Owen Watkin and Liam Williams have all been omitted,There are others,Wyn Jones, who after 48 caps has said he still wants to play for Wales, is at Harlequins, and so is his fellow prop Dillon Lewis,There’s Carré, who says that the reason he moved to England was because he felt Wales didn’t want him.
And also Taine Basham,They may not be world beaters, but along with Dewi Lake, Will Rowlands and Gareth Thomas, who all played in that victory in Bloemfontein, and the best of the rest of current side, there’s the spine of a better Welsh team there,And that’s before you get to the exiled players, such as Moriarty and Tomas Francis,Sign up to The BreakdownThe latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week's action reviewedafter newsletter promotionGatland’s best argument is a bad argument,He says it would be a step backwards to start again under someone else, and even then it’s not clear that you’d be any more likely to have any success given that sacking him would not do anything to fix the WRU.
It’s often said that it can’t afford to get rid of him anyway, given that it would need to buy him out of his contract, but if things carry on like this they won’t be able to afford to keep him, given that the attendances at the Principality are shrinking.The WRU used to pay Gatland the big money because he delivered.Now it feels as if it is doing it because he’s taking a beating on its behalf.He is a good man, and was a great coach.It’s beginning to feel like his last act of service to the Welsh game will be to take the blame for its failings, and, by doing so, force it to finally confront the state it is in.
Stephen Colbert on Trump: ‘Continuing to shovel steaming piles of nominee into his cabinet’
Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump’s nomination of Dr Mehmet Oz to his administration, and the ongoing scandals around his attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz.Donald Trump “is continuing to shovel steaming piles of nominee into his cabinet”, said Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s Late Show. On Tuesday, Trump announced the pseudoscience advocate and former TV host Mehmet Oz as the administrator of Medicare and Medicaid. “OK so he’s still just picking people he sees on TV,” said Colbert. “Next up, the head of Amtrak goes to Thomas the Tank Engine
Jon Stewart to Democrats: ‘Exploit the loopholes’
Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump’s “White House Tinder” cabinet selection process and Republicans’ willingness to exploit loopholes to get their way.Jon Stewart returned to his Monday evening perch at The Daily Show to urge Democrats to act like Republicans and “exploit the loopholes” to thwart Donald Trump’s agenda.“Even those putting up resistance to Trump’s agenda don’t seem to understand who they’re dealing with,” said Stewart before a clip of Elizabeth Warren accusing the president-elect of breaking the law by failing to sign an ethics pledge before the deadline.“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Republicans are playing chess, and the Democrats are in the nurse’s office because they glued their balls to their thigh,” said Stewart
Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Francis Ford Coppola’s very horny vampire epic
This year marked the long-awaited return of the American film-making legend Francis Ford Coppola to the cinema, with Megalopolis: a $120m self-financed “fable” with a go-for-broke sensibility, about a time-defying architect trying to build the city of the future in the wake of his wife’s untimely death. Fans of its deranged overtures may do well to revisit Coppola’s other maximalist fable about a time-defying man grappling with his wife’s untimely death: Bram Stoker’s Dracula.It was lead actress Winona Ryder who first brought the project to Coppola – as an apology after she abruptly quit Coppola’s third Godfather film (to be infamously replaced by his daughter, Sofia). Coppola’s version of the gothic novel brings the bloodthirsty Count (a brilliant Gary Oldman) out of the shadows and into the forefront, reimagining the character as a tragic war hero, who – in renouncing God after the suicide of his wife, Elisabeta (Ryder) – is condemned to eternal life as a vampire. Years pass, and the shape-shifting Dracula discovers that the reincarnation of his wife, Mina (also Ryder), resides in 19th century London, where he eventually seduces her at the exhibition of a newfangled entertainment: the cinematograph
‘I hit the boom operator’s car with an arrow. He was inside’: how we made Robin of Sherwood
Richard “Kip” Carpenter, the writer, wanted our outlaws to be young. I’d once directed Michael Praed and had cast Ray Winstone in Scum. So Michael played Robin and Ray was his brotherly companion Will Scarlet. Then I spotted Clive Mantle and Phil Rose at a birthday party and said: “You two – Little John and Friar Tuck!” Marion was harder to find, until I suggested making her a redhead and thought of Judi Trott, who I’d cast in a terrible American TV film about Charles and Diana. They went for it straight away
Inequality in the arts is not new | Letters
Regrettably, the Sutton Trust’s confirmation of baseline class inequity in the arts isn’t new news (Young working-class people being ‘blocked’ from creative industries, study finds, 13 November). What is sad is that those charged with making and delivering arts policy have consistently failed to alleviate it.This is surely not due to a lack of data, when as long ago as 1985, the Brighton, Parry and Pearson study revealed that more than half of all artists came from the top two social classes. Even then, the inadequacy of arts employment prospects was the core reason.Forty years later, post Tory austerity cuts, post the pandemic’s put-artists-last arts policies, it’s deja vu
On my radar: Peter Biskind’s cultural highlights
Born in 1940, Peter Biskind is a cultural critic and film historian whose books include Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, The Godfather Companion and Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America. Between 1981 and 1986 Biskind was editor-in-chief of American Film magazine, and was executive editor of Premiere magazine from 1986 to 1996. His writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone and Sight and Sound. His latest book, Pandora’s Box: The Greed, Lust, and Lies That Broke Television, explores the behind-the-screens story of the golden age of TV, from The Sopranos to streaming.Anora (dir Sean Baker, 2024)Anora has got a lot of attention this year, and it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, which Sean Baker dedicated to sex workers
Armagnac: the secret bargain of the spirit world
‘I’ll be making my own’: UK’s most expensive mince pie divides opinion
Noodle Inn, London W1: ‘Queue, order, pay, get out’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants
‘Make the beans your bitch’ – how to join the leguminati, plus five great recipes
How to cook the perfect aloo bhorta
Parsnip tarte tatin, roast turkey, zabaglione – Angela Hartnett’s fuss-free Christmas recipes