Five months on from Gatland, Wales flounder with no coach and little hope

Wales Online

15 hours ago

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So, here we are again.
The final week of a long and wretched season in Welsh rugby. It's become a regular occurrence - burying the largely awful campaign that has just gone in the hope that things, somehow, can only get better. Last year, it was the Cory Hill captaincy circus in Brisbane ahead of a clash with the Queensland Reds - with Warren Gatland helpfully trying to put out a fire with petrol.
The year before, the final days of that campaign were spent trying to banish thoughts of strike action, misogyny and water-boarding with the World Cup on the horizon.
The trick, certainly in recent years, is to know that there are always further depths to plumb. Because now, it's even more desperate than ever. Sign up to Inside Welsh rugby on Substack for the exclusive five-week tour diary from Japan and Australia.
Gatland left his post five months ago, after 14 Test defeats in a row. Five months later, that losing run is up to 18 and still there is no sign of white smoke on Westgate Street.
In a rugby sense, we are in purgatory.
Defeat to Japan in Kitakyushu was many things. A paradox at times. It was fairly incomprehensible given the inexperience of this Brave Blossoms side, yet entirely predictable once the wheels started to wobble on the axels.
This Wales team is, above all else, fragile. Once Japan, poor for so long, got a sniff, it had a sense of inevitability about it.
This group of players, effectively broken by the pressures of the goldfish bowl once that red jersey is on their backs, have tried manfully, but it seems like, regardless of selection, they have become a self-fulfilling prophecy in the last 630-odd days.
Whereas Wales once forgot how to lose, now victory is a distant, distant memory.
Naturally, the instinct is to point the finger. Those on social media will have been sharpening their collective knives for players and coaches - with no comment section more vitriolic that the Welsh Rugby Union's official channels.
It all feels like wasted energy - particularly on the union's official feed.
Sure, you can have a go at the coaches - but they're just men who have stepped into the breach because of how long the WRU have taken with their search. They're not auditioning for the job, simply trying to help Wales finally taste victory again.
Next week, they'll be back to their day jobs - and Wales will be coachless once more.
Wales have toured with caretaker coaches before, but that was when they had a head coach in place. This is new territory - one that was probably avoidable.
Could a new coach not have been put in place for this tour? The search has rumbled on for some time, essentially restarting once Dave Reddin was appointed director of rugby and elite performance.
Yet, we still don't have a name. By the time we do - providing anyone wants to step into this mess - who knows where Welsh rugby will be,.
The decline has been as alarming as it is depressing.
WRU chief executive Abi Tierney has been in post for all 18 of Wales' defeats on this run. She's currently in Japan, before she heads out to Australia for the Lions Tests.
(Image: Chris Fairweather/Huw Evans Agency)
WRU chair Richard Collier-Keywood is back in the UK. Despite all that has been going on with Welsh rugby - from the constant talk of going down to two or three clubs and all the uncertainty that brings - the pair have been silent for weeks.
All that has done to this point is breed contempt and paranoia.
As things stand, there's no evidence of clear leadership within Welsh rugby. It just feels like the game trying to starve itself to a slimmer model - brinksmanship that may work in the long run, but may not.
The end of the season is nigh. The end of the rot is far from done.