Woe Is Wales: The Case For A Coaching Clean-Out

The Springboks’ bleak performance art is the only thing stopping Wales from being the most depressing tier one rugby nation at the moment, writes Lee Calvert.

As Sam Davies’ drop goal sailed between the posts to seal his side’s narrow win over Japan on Saturday, interim Wales coach Rob Howley stood unmoved in his glass coaching box, poured into a supermarket suit, headset wrapped around his bemused phizog. He looked for all the world like a first day sales rep struggling to think of anything enticing to say about the tat he was peddling. Which was not actually that far away from reality.

In the opposite box Japanese coach Jamie Joseph, still looking like one of the hardest men on the planet, appeared disappointed but largely satisfied after his side’s narrow loss. Why wouldn’t he? His side is still not exactly a rugby power, are currently in transition and on this tour are shorn of many of their usual starters. Yet they once again ran a tier one nation close, as they have done at every opportunity in the last 12 months.

Over at Twickenham, Japan’s old coach Eddie Jones was overseeing his (also transitioning) England team as they dismantled Fiji. Remember, last time Fiji turned up they put the full frighteners on Stuart Lancaster’s England during the World Cup. Here, fourteen months on, their return visit saw the islanders biblically tonked.

In Edinburgh, Vern Cotter’s face glowered out of his giant head dome as his team looked enterprising and pacey in their win over Argentina. Big Vern doesn’t  really do human emotions, but he must have been at least a bit happy. Finally, Joe Schmidt and his new assistants saw his team compete both tactically and physically with the All Blacks for the second time in three weeks.

What jumps out of these vignettes is that Wales aside, these teams have seen or are about to see some changes in their coaching setup.

To its credit, rugby is a game where coaching changes are not of the knee-jerk football variety; coaches are given sufficient resources to make a difference and it is recognised that the most important resource is time. Moreover, rugby is also mature enough to recognise that simply changing a coach is often not the answer.

But pig-headed obsession with continuity can lead to some stupid decisions. Like having a baby to save a miserable marriage, the Welsh Rugby Union recently renewed the contracts of each of their coaching staff up to 2019, despite the fact that Wales have been standing still or going backwards for three years with their gameplan.

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When the slightest hint of some improvement came along in the summer, the elders at the WRU decided to allow Warren Gatland to have an extra-marital affair with the Lions, leaving Howley, Rob MacBryde and Shaun Edwards holding the team, a sticking plaster baby that won’t succumb to a routine and regularly shits itself in public.

For nearly a decade Wales have done the same thing with the same coaches, but the problem for them is for the latter part of this decade everyone else in other teams has started doing other things.  The most damning indictment of Wales now is that, unlike any other major team, it is basically impossible to answer the question, “what is this team good at?” Difficult isn’t it?

With the exception of South Africa, who seem to have transformed into some depressing modern art installation entitled ‘Pointless Befuddlement’, every other team this weekend had something they specifically do well. England have their forwards, Japan have pace and hands, Scotland have their pacey rucking game back, Australia have creativity, Ireland their omnivorous defence and classy halfbacks, and New Zealand are New Zealand.

Most worrying for Wales fans is that it is clear that Rob Howley cannot answer that question either and looks to have no idea what to do about it.

Wales needs a total overhaul of their coaching staff, but the trouble is it will cost the WRU nearly £2 million in compensation to achieve this due to their own stupidity in locking them in in such long contracts despite all evidence demonstrating it was a very bad idea.

Instead Wales fans can look forward to a whole season of not being good at anything while Howley looks bewildered, Edwards looks like smoke is about to start billowing from his ears and nobody knows what MacBryde looks like as he never lifts his phizog from staring at the laptop screen.

Eventually Warren Gatland will come back.  But even then there is not a lot of evidence to suggest this will make things any better.