Everyone likes to pick a team, from pundits who run through their selections on TV programmes to punters in well-nigh every pub in the land and especially the man who memorably wrote a letter to the South Wales Evening Post newspaper back in the day with six Neath RFC players in his World XV.
It’s all a bit of fun.
Warren Gatland is entitled to join in, as well — of course he is — and he did so with his selection in The Telegraph of a 23-man Lions squad in the hypothetical event of the best of British and Irish rugby playing a Test next weekend.
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The headline wasn’t so much the 10 Irish players named in the starting line-up as the current Wales coach not picking a single one of his own players in a group of 23. Judging by some of the comments on social media, some saw it as the equivalent of emptying a large bucket of disapproval over the lot of them.
There again, plenty of observers will wonder what’s the problem. Wales, after all, were largely mediocre in the Six Nations, winning just one of their five games, with even their sole success seeing them make hard work of beating Italy.
Maybe there’s a case for wondering why room couldn’t be found in the back row for Taulupe Faletau, who made more carries than all but one player, England’s Freddie Steward, in the entire tournament. The Wales international also piled up 58 tackles and was widely felt to have done a wonderful job in adversity. But he didn’t make the cut, with Gatland naming an all-Ireland back row, including Jack Conan, who started just one game, as his number six.
Still, each to his own.
The point is it’s not so much the selections that are the issue — as mentioned above, whoever picked a Lions side for a game next weekend might struggle to justify the inclusion of too many Welsh players after the results and performances of the team of late.
No, the issue is the wisdom of Gatland opting to air all this in public. His defence might be that he’s telling it as it is. That’s fair enough.
But might there be something else going on. The Kiwi’s track record suggests he’s not averse to mind games, so, just maybe, should we see this exercise as an attempt to fire up players into proving him wrong?
If so, subtlety isn’t having its finest hour. Not all players are the same and therein is the reason why this episode may not prove the usually sure-footed Gatland’s sharpest move.
“Ninety percent of players perform better by being told they are good players.” Only 10 percent need kicking up the backside. So reckoned Gary Lineker during his football-playing days.
It seems reasonable to suggest rugby players operate along not wildly dissimilar lines. For every one who’ll want to prove a coach who slights him totally and utterly wrong, there’ll be plenty more who’ll feel bruised at a public downgrading.
Ray Gravell is an example of someone who constantly needed to have an arm put around him to perform at his best. JPR Williams has said how the famously insecure warrior prince used to harangue him during matches. “‘Doc, how am I doing? Am I playing well?’ I’d say: ‘Grav, you’re doing very well, but I’m trying to concentrate on my own game. Keep doing as you are, and leave me alone.'”
Gravell wanted to be reassured and have his considerable plus points reinforced and endorsed.
Plenty of others are the same.
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Explaining his call to overlook his own players, Gatland says: “It is simply a reflection of where we are as a team right now. I am confident that we will get better, and it would be interesting to see if we do this exercise again after the World Cup warm-up games and the World Cup itself, how much it would change.”
It would be interesting to see, too, if Wales were to face Ireland at any point during the World Cup, how Gatland would be able to tell his players they are better than their opposite numbers.
Graham Henry hit the same problem after the 2001 Lions tour when some Wales players were marginal figures in Australia and the following campaign the New Zealander had difficulty getting his messages through, with some feeling he lost the Welsh dressing room.
Gatland’s delve back into an imaginary world of Lions selection for next weekend is not of the same order but some players may nonetheless feel less than impressed and wonder why their own team boss has acted thus.
He has a reputation for doing things his own way. But he has had a difficult start to his second stint as Wales head coach and whether all this will help improve matters is more than a bit debatable.
A wise old lecturer this writer once came across used to reckon: “Correction does much, encouragement does more.”
It’s not a bad mantra to go by.
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