Warren Gatland's team have had a disrupted training week ahead of England. Photo / Photosport
In a Daily Telegraph column, Wales head coach Warren Gatland lifts the lid on one of the most tumultuous weeks in Welsh rugby’s history, as his players threatened strike action over a Welsh Rugby Union dispute.
The week that almost brought Welsh rugby to the brink of financial Armageddon began in surprisingly mundane fashion.
On Monday morning, when I woke up at my apartment near our training base at the Vale Resort, my first thought was on fine-tuning the plan to give us the best chance of beating England.
We may have lost our first two games in the Guinness Six Nations, but this was the game everyone in Wales was looking forward to. This was a game that we knew how to win, and I suspect that, privately, England were worried about.
It was the game that would define both our championships. The pressure on both sides would be immense.
It had quickly become aware to me that the size of the challenge of rebuilding the Wales side was far greater than I had first imagined when I accepted the offer to come back.
But that did not bother me. Time and again people have asked me if I regretted my decision to return to Wales.
But one of the main reasons that I accepted the offer to come back was that I believed I could make a difference. I have spent the best years of my coaching career in Wales. This is not the moment to turn my back on the country. This is the moment to roll up my sleeves and get stuck in.
And yet nothing could have prepared me for the drama and angst that was about to unfold. Looking back now, few people realise just how close we came to the brink of disaster. Everything that I had worked for during my previous 11-year tenure, including those glorious days of three Grand Slams, could have been lost forever. Welcome to the toughest week of my coaching career. Actually, you can make that the toughest month.
‘The level of anger surprised me’
It was when I arrived at our hotel that the first signs of the trouble that lay ahead first hit me.
When I took the job before Christmas, I had been made aware that a deal between the union and the regions over funding was imminent and the players had been told in November that it was due to be sorted. Then I was told it would be over the line just after Christmas after protracted negotiations.
What took me by absolute surprise was the level of frustration and anger that boiled over from the players on Monday morning. I was told that the players were demanding a meeting with Nigel Walker, the interim chief executive of the WRU.
There were three key demands – an end to the 60-cap rule, players representation on the professional game board, and changes to new fixed variable contracts that would mean players receive 80 per cent of their salary fixed and 20 per cent based on win bonuses.
Part of the problem was the number of moving parts involved.
There was no easy fix and time was the last thing on our side. I still don’t know how this hadn’t been sorted months ago, but what I was about to find out was just how strongly my players felt about the situation.
They had been told again and again that it was going to be sorted, but when their frustration boiled over it came to a head on Monday morning, and I must admit I was caught completely by surprise by the players’ demands and reaction.
‘I was caught in the middle’
It kicked off on Monday. There was a players’ meeting and then through our team manager Martyn Williams they demanded to meet with Nigel to sort everything out. It was clear they had had enough.
Learning the extent of their frustration was one of the hardest things I had to deal with. I have always prided myself on putting the demands of the players first. I have always wanted them and their families to feel appreciated within the Wales camp.
I know how much they give to play international rugby and I have never taken that for granted. And yet everything they were feeling contradicted everything that I stood for.
I was caught in the middle. I am employed by the union so it is a hard position to be in. You want to support the players as much as possible, but you got to be very careful about how much of the line you cross from that perspective.
And to be fair it wasn’t my role to do that. That was for people in other positions to sit down and negotiate with the players and it was difficult because some of the players were very forthright about their demands.
My role was to try to offer balance about the possible implications of what their actions could actually cause. I’m not sure that they had thought through that process about the potential consequences of the long term effects of the game not going ahead.
It would have had such an impact on all rugby in Wales, and potentially led to one or two of the regions going under.
I wasn’t talking to all the players, just our captain Ken Owens and Alun Wyn Jones, and I got the impression that some were trying to find a balance. The truth is that I was not privy to a lot of the discussions. In a week like this it was difficult to see the players get together on their own when I knew we should be spending that time preparing for England.
But what hurt me most was hearing a couple of emotive comments from players, second hand, that I didn’t care about them. That was the hardest thing because I have always been about putting the players first and looking after them.
But I just think it was the emotions of the time.
‘Ken Owens handled the pressure so admirably’
I can’t tell you how much respect I had for Ken Owens this week. He was the middle man between the players and the WRU and he dealt with the pressure so admirably, even if at times he looked like he had aged by 10 years.
It was on Tuesday morning when he asked me not to name the team against England. I understood his concerns. What both of us wanted was to protect the players from the media scrutiny that naming the team would have put on the players.
Questions would have come to the group about whether they were prepared to play and that would have created division in the group. I didn’t think it was fair on the players.
What I regret is that I didn’t communicate properly with the players who are based in England.
Without the team being named, they would have to go back to their clubs on Tuesday, so we had to name them in the 23.
Those were the cards that we were dealt, and I didn’t think it was fair to send one or two of them back without us naming a team. But I could have explained the position we were in more accurately to the players.
‘I would have easily got a team if I had walked up St Mary Street’
As a coaching team, we had to keep looking forward. We had really pushed the players hard last week, and on Tuesday morning, despite the drama of the previous day, I was so impressed by their commitment.
We decided to extend the morning session because we told them there would not be a session in the afternoon. But we didn’t tell the players. It was a great session.
After all the distractions, we wanted the players to get away from everything and they all went home on Tuesday night. I went to bed, seriously worried that for all our preparations, the game would not go ahead.
I knew the next day would be so important for the future of Welsh rugby and there was a definite possibility that the game would not go ahead.
As a coaching team, we had joked about what sort of team we might be able to field if the players went ahead with their strike threat.
We asked if Jonathan Humphreys was available and Jonathan Thomas, and Neil Jenkins at 10. Jamie Roberts had just finished last year and Shane Williams is currently training for triathlons.
To be fair to Nigel and the WRU, it was never mentioned to me. Nor was the prospect of delaying the match by a week, given that it is a fallow week.
I am pretty sure I would have easily got a team if I had walked up St Mary Street and asked who was up for beating England. But thankfully we never got that far.
‘Bring it on England’
Wednesday was meant to be our day off. But it turned out to be arguably the most important day in the history of Welsh rugby.
I remained hopeful there would be reconciliation but after the press conference on Tuesday, I must admit that I wasn’t that confident.
My biggest fear was that there was a lot of sympathy for the players but with the concessions that were prepared to be made by the WRU and the regions, if the game had not gone ahead, a number of people would have turned against the players.
Like everything in negotiations, you need to ensure that both sides feel like they have won. We can’t deny there was a massive amount at stake for the whole game in Wales, that was the bottom line.
I wanted to look at the first couple of games to see where we were at and I think I have a good handle on the work that needs to be done over the next number of months.
If I look back at the success that we had, it papered over a lot of the cracks and problems that may have come to the surface earlier.
I knew the meeting with the players and the Welsh Rugby Union was taking place and there was little I could do apart from reviewing the game against England.
Remarkably, in the midst of the crisis, Martyn Williams received a request from the RFU for the roof at the Principality Stadium to be open for the game, that we did not yet know would even go ahead.
If they want it open, then bring it on. Our win ratio is actually better when the roof is open. At least it helped pass the time.
When I finally got the good news that a compromise had been reached, I caught up with the coaches to finalise the plan for the rest of the week.
Ken and Alun Wyn Jones came up to me on Wednesday night and said the best thing for the squad was not to mention what had gone on in the days before.
On Thursday morning I finally named the team. The conversation was short. I said it had been a challenging week and we needed to draw a line in the sand and focus entirely on playing against England.
In fairness to the boys, given what has been going on, they have trained hard and been good in the sessions. It has probably been a welcome distraction to them and I have to take my hat off to them.
The difficult thing to assess is just what impact the mental stress of this week has had on the players, but one thing I can promise the Welsh supporters, is that the players know how much it means to you.
Armageddon or not.