FROM DISARRAY TO DISTINCTION
What a difference a year makes. When the Welsh Rugby Union announced a year ago that it had signed a new contract with Warren Gatland that would keep the New Zealander in charge of the national team until 2015, it was roundly criticised in the media and beyond after a run of mediocre performances.
The WRU quickly let it be known that the contract had a one-way release clause allowing it to get rid of Gatland should the World Cup campaign go awry. If anyone had predicted then that Wales would make the final, they would have found themselves modelling straitjackets.
And now? The WRU has issued a hands-off warning to New Zealand, saying Gatland is not going anywhere and praising itself for its foresight. It deserves credit: for once it did not sack a coach in the buildup to a World Cup. It had only resisted the temptation once before, in 1987 when Wales also reached the semi-finals.
The WRU is milking the achievement of Gatland's squad, and why not? A problem with Wales in the past has been a lack of grace in victory – if not from players or coaches – and the Welsh union was leading the charge against the Sanzar unions at Monday's meeting of the chairmen and chief executives of the tier-one countries.
Wales were similarly exultant in 1987, returning home proclaiming they were the third-best team in the world after beating Australia in the play-off and shrugging off the 49-6 semi-final defeat to New Zealand by saying they could go back to beating England every year.
A year later, they were in disarray despite having won the triple crown. Hammered by provinces and the All Blacks on a tour of New Zealand, they spent the next three years lurching from one record defeat to another and responding to chronic failure by changing coaches rather than looking at underlying causes.
The club scene remained healthy, at least in terms of support, and when the All Blacks toured in 1989 and Australia visited in 1992, a year after winning the World Cup, they were pushed harder by clubs such as Neath, Llanelli and Swansea than they were by Wales.
It is almost the reverse now. Wales's regions made no impact on the Heineken Cup last season, failing to provide a quarter-finalist, and only Ospreys scraped into the Magners League play-offs. Two English clubs contested the Anglo-Welsh Cup final.
Wales's rise this tournament, just like the grand slam successes of 2005 and 2008, which were not followed up, has not been based on a foundation in the regional game. Gatland has had his players together for more than four months, compared with the week or two he gets either before a domestic international series.
He has moulded them into a club unit and of the 22 players involved on Saturday, James Hook, like the injured player he has replaced, Rhys Priestland, was not the first-choice outside-half for his region last season; the scrum-half Mike Phillips was bombed by Ospreys three months before the end of the campaign; at forward, Huw Bennett and Sam Warburton are not the leading players in their positions for their regions; and on the bench, Lloyd Williams and Scott Williams were not first-team regulars.
Gatland has trusted his instincts and Wales have used their academies well. For someone who was being pilloried less than a year ago for being conservative and adopting the dullest of gameplans, he has not only taken one of the youngest teams in the World Cup to a semi-final but he has done so by allowing the players to showcase their talent.
As Wales showed in the quarter-final against Ireland, the management team have got it spot on tactically, tweaking the approach depending on the opposition. They have consistently got the maximum out of the players, and if their route to the final was made less hazardous when Ireland, rather than Australia, finished at the top of Pool C, they would have had no qualms about taking on the Wallabies in the quarter-final.
It is worth recalling a question asked by a Welsh journalist to the former All Blacks captain Sean Fitzpatrick on the eve of the match between Wales and New Zealand last November: "I cannot remember a time when Wales have been so written off by their own people. Warren Gatland is under pressure. Do you see Wales as having any chance of beating the All Blacks?"
When Wales return from the World Cup, the players will go back to their regions to prepare for the Heineken Cup. Wales face Australia in Cardiff in early December, a hastily arranged match that will spark more interest than the 2007 post-World Cup meeting with the holders, South Africa.
It is being played to boost the WRU's bank balance. The four regions will have just had their players back when they have to release them again, and by expanding the international programme to its maximum – four internationals will be played next summer on top of five matches in the Six Nations and four Tests in the autumn – the union is in danger of weakening its regions.
Rugby supporters in Wales are not the most flush in the world. The more they spend on watching Wales, the less they are able to afford on the regions, all of whom had average crowds of four figures last season, well down on the majority of Premiership clubs as well as Leinster and Munster.
The WRU is using business to drive the sport. Success this World Cup will reverse that, for a time, but if Gatland is approached by the New Zealand Rugby Union to succeed Henry, he could be forgiven for reflecting that the next time he will have the Wales players for an extended period of time will be in 2015.
The gains made during this tournament could quickly be dissipated through no fault of Gatland. That is not the concern, for now, as one of the few countries in the world that can claim rugby union is its national sport, prepares for its biggest day in the professional era.
It would be no surprise if Wales beat France to reach the final. Gatland has been the smartest coach this tournament, coming up with surprises in an age of the most detailed analysis. Any triumph will be his, his management's and his players'. They have prevailed despite the system that serves them and if his employers rejected any approach from New Zealand, they would be honour bound to address that, not wave a piece of paper in the air.
