Dylan Cleaver: Welsh dragon's ire directed at Gatland

Wales coach Warren Gatland has come under from Welsh rugby fans. Photo / Getty Images

Graham Henry might feel his team has a bit on their plate every time he sends them out for a test match, but it is nothing compared with what counterpart Warren Gatland is feeling.

While Gatland sits on a burning hot-seat at Millennium Stadium this weekend, by comparison Henry could coach this one from a sunlounger with a pina colada in hand.

Take yesterday's Western Mail, Wales' national daily newspaper. On the back page ran the headline: "It's time for home truths as Gatland's Wales must face up to their frailties."

What followed was an editorial that left no ambiguity as to how the Welsh have reacted to the embarrassing 16-16 draw against Fiji last weekend.

"Almost 72 hours on and the gloom sitting over Welsh rugby following [the] Fijian farce shows no sign of lifting," the story started.

"If anything, it is worse after a weekend when Scotland's dogged victory against South Africa at Murrayfield brought the autumn failures of Warren Gatland's Wales into sharper focus."

Not just Wales, but "Warren Gatland's Wales".

Part of the sudden ambivalence towards Gatland is generated by the idea that he held the Wales Rugby Union to ransom last month.

In October he signed a four-year extension to his contract that will see him take the team through the next two World Cups. He did so after "admitting" he was considering going back to New Zealand for family reasons.

The timing was questionable, much like the contract given to Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan before their disastrous 2007 campaign in France.

The Irish Rugby Football Union extracted themselves from that, and the WRU might have to do something similar if Gatland cannot turn around a miserable string of results.

Wales have won just two of 11 tests this year, a lucky 31-24 win over the Scots at home and a Six Nations victory against easybeats Italy.

But it is not just the results. Gatland bullishly lurched into a PR disaster by announcing immediately after the Fiji test that his captain, Ryan Jones, would no longer be captain against the All Blacks. Rather than being seen as a coach taking swift and decisive action against a player whose indiscipline has undoubtedly let the side down, it was viewed as dissembling.

Former captain Gwyn Jones led a chorus of disapproval.

"In taking the captaincy away [Gatland] created a scapegoat, avoiding criticism he himself deserves," he said.

It was a point picked up in the Western Mail's excoriating editorial.

"Judging by what we saw, Wales weren't prepared properly ... So much seemed to be missing and the buck must stop with Gatland."

It wasn't so long ago that the New Zealand media were putting the national coach and his assistants through a similar examination.

Wayne Smith said there was a simple formula for dealing with the opprobrium.

"It's just like being a player. You've got to have belief in yourself and know that you're doing everything possible to do your job well. You can't do anything else.

"There's a yardstick I've always used: Am I working hard enough? Am I doing the right things? Can I do anything more? If you answer those questions in the right way, you can live with yourself."

While it seems everything and everyone is going against him, Gatland can take solace from one unequivocal fact: if Wales beat New Zealand this weekend for the first time in 57 years, all will be forgiven in the blink of an eye.

Such is the way of the Welsh.