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Warren Gatland cautiously optimistic about mooted competition: 'Sometimes under crisis there's an opportunity to fix things.'

Warren Gatland. (Photo by Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)

Warren Gatland has provided words of wisdom for any cross-hemisphere rugby competition that tries to get off the ground, noting it must be a fan-friendly experience.

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French rugby boss Bernard Laporte indicated his desire to make a world club championship tournament happen to bring something fresh to the game.

While the premise – six Super Rugby teams, four each from the English Premiership, French Top 14 and PRO14, plus the league champions from Japan and the United States involved – is an exciting one, Chiefs coach Gatland told Newstalk ZB’s Nigel Yalden the right steps need to be taken to ensure its success.

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Mako Vunipola took on England teammate Jack Nowell in the Quarter-Final of the RugbyPass FIFA Pros competition.

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Mako Vunipola took on England teammate Jack Nowell in the Quarter-Final of the RugbyPass FIFA Pros competition.

“I think whatever structures they come up with, you’ve got to have continuity and give people time to buy into it,” Gatland said.

“We’ve got to be very careful about restructuring and changing because people lose a bit of interest. We saw that in the Northern Hemisphere a few years ago when we had the Heineken Cup and it was run by the four unions and it was incredibly exciting when it came to the semifinals.

“Then the clubs got involved and they wanted to take over and said they could generate more money. The struggled to get the same level of sponsorship…and it just lost the same appeal and interest.

“I think a little bit the same has happened to Super Rugby.”

Rugby is among the many sports to be hit hard financially by the coronavirus pandemic, with all leagues around the world coming to a halt.

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During the layoff, there have been a number of suggested competitions or series to help pump some money back into the game, with Gatland himself suggesting his British and Irish Lions squad play against the All Blacks in a test to decide their drawn series from 2017.

“I suppose everyone’s just trying to throw ideas into the pot and brainstorm about what potentially could there be going forward,” Gatland said. “Sometimes under crisis there’s an opportunity to fix things or to come up with a better format, or add to things. I think this is one of the potential ideas.

“There’s no doubt globally everyone is struggling not just in rugby but all the peripheries of the sport in terms of financial, and we’re trying to generate as much income as we can in as shorter space as possible to get things up and running again.”

This article first appeared on nzherald.co.nz and is republished with permission.

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

4 Go to comments
N
Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

43 Go to comments
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