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'This is like an Eddie Jones question, is it' - Gatland on his Wales future

Wales' head coach Warren Gatland looks on during the warm up ahead of the France 2023 Rugby World Cup quarter-final match between Wales and Argentina at the Stade Velodrome in Marseille, south-eastern France, on October 14, 2023. (Photo by NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP) (Photo by NICOLAS TUCAT/AFP via Getty Images)

Wales boss Warren Gatland was quizzed on his future as head coach following Wales’ Rugby World Cup quarter-final exit at the hands of Argentina in Marseille yesterday evening.

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The Welsh may have crashed out of the tournament following the 29-17 loss to Michael Cheika’s Argentina but Gatland struck a surprisingly upbeat figure in the post-match press conference in the bowels of the Stade Velodrome.

The 60-year-old was asked about his immediate future with Wales, whom he took over for a second spell earlier this year.

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“This is like an Eddie Jones question, is it?! I’m not actually sure what’s in my contract. I think there’s a clause from the union. I’m not too sure what the actual wording is, I haven’t actually read it.”

Gatland however was clear, he wants to stay on as Wales head coach.

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“Yeh, absolutely, [on whether he wants to continue coaching Wales] but if the union want to get rid of me, they are completely entitled to do that as well. That’s up to them.

“I think that’s the big thing. We’re all pretty disappointed, pretty gutted about that. It’s one that slipped away from us, but you’ve got to take learnings. How do you continue to improve and develop as a squad? Some of the learnings from today…we had a team that kicked a lot against us and kicked long and we probably at times played a little bit too much rugby around about halfway and maybe needed to be potentially a little bit more conservative. But how do we take those learnings and grow as a team?

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“I’m incredibly proud of the work that these players have put in, the coaches, the whole staff have been absolutely fantastic. We’ve made some really good strides and we need to make sure we continue on that path. We don’t want to be going backwards. That’s a good challenge for us to accept, to make sure we continue to keep improving.

“A lot of people were writing us off before this tournament, saying we wouldn’t get out of the group, so that was the first thing. This group have worked really hard to get what they have achieved. I just said to the players in the changing room… they are very down, very disappointed but they should hold their heads up. They should be proud of what they have done. We have got to make sure we continue to grow and improve as a team. We have got some exciting players coming through. Hopefully they will be inspired by this and will want to be involved in it going forward.”

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2 Comments
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Bob Marler 433 days ago

Wales has some serious potential. Time for a new coach.

Who?

I reckon a South African coach would do well there. Someone in the leagues that could do with a break at international coaching. Someone who could become a Bok coach.

Lots of job openings coming up. Springboks, Wales, England, Australia, Italy. It’s time to think about these things.

Time to get your CVS polished up folks.

N
NJ 433 days ago

upbeat?… there’s only so much you can do with limited personnel.

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JW 26 minutes ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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