Wow, did not expect that mid-campaign. He obviously isn’t the problem imo
He’s not entirely the problem now - I think it’s a three-tier problem with problems above Gats, with Gats, and below him.
Gatland himself should never have come back - if he didn’t, he’d have had a statue on St Mary’s Street by now. He did come back though, and by that point the world had moved on from Gatlandball. Other teams could see through it; refs were wise to the cheeky tricks: and commentators could read set plays before the ball had even come out.
The Wales team isn’t exactly stellar either. It’s a team full of great players, but very few world class players. It’s a team that would be sent on tour to the US or to the South Africa provinces five or ten years ago, but not a team that can stand up to top tier rugby.
From above, the WRU have let it stagnate. Cutting development programs and academies; and letting the four Pro12 teams (or whatever it is these days) flounder have given the team nothing to play with for the next five or ten years.
It’s an absolute disaster, but I suppose it’s given the Western Mail front pages for a while.
I suspect two pro teams and a vastly beefed up Welsh amateur/semi-pro league the solution long term. It’s the Scotland model and the clamour for a third team is ever present but cutting cloth to fit your budget is apparent. U20s has to be the focus essentially to a better crop
That’s entirely on the WRU, if they’d paid any attention at all to Southern Hemisphere rugby they’d have seen what a disaster he was with the Chiefs in Super Rugby where in effect he had to be promoted out of the coaching role because the losses were so continual. And then Clayton MacMillan pretty much turned the whole thing around with basically the same squad.
They addressed the wrong problem when they ditched Pivac, and since then the top team performance has gotten worse while the underlying issues haven’t been addressed at all.
And given Gatland didn’t resign at the end of last season, and this has been termed a mutual one I imagine there’ll be a lot of scuttlebutt about whether he just held out for a payout or not, which is money WRU can ill afford given the problems still there!