Wales’s interim head coach, Robert Howley, was asked after he had named his Six Nations squad whether the evolution in playing style, with its greater emphasis on retaining possession and seeking space, meant that the side had been one-dimensional before.
If his players detect a trap as quickly, Wales will be contenders for the title this year. Howley smiled, paused and then said that by answering the question he would be agreeing with it. He neatly sidestepped it, pointing out that Wales had not done badly in the Six Nations since the current management team came in at the end of 2007 and that the emphasis was on complementing what had worked over the years.
As a player Howley lived off his wits, an opportunist scrum-half, but the paradigm in Europe this decade has been for players to adhere to a script, left speechless when it becomes blurred. Kiwi coaches like Warren Gatland, who is on a year’s sabbatical from Wales to plan the Lions tour to his homeland, and Joe Schmidt have been considerably more prescriptive than they would have been at home because players did not have the same instinctive feel for the game and wanted to be told what to do.
That worked when defences dominated and matches between the top teams hinged on a few plays but, as the number of set pieces in a match has fallen and teams are more confident of retaining possession because of a change in emphasis at the breakdown that has made it harder to secure turnovers, there has been an uplift in attacking play.
Coaches such as England’s Eddie Jones have recognised that following a game plan to the letter is counter-productive because there is much more for players to react to. He encourages them to make decisions and says that to watch Owen Farrell now and then to look at the player he was four years ago is to see someone completely different, and not just because he is more experienced. He has alertness now, a variety to his game and supreme self-confidence.
Howley is investing responsibility in his players but it is taking him more time than Jones. When he started his career, Wales had a buoyant club scene: there were big matches every week, fierce rivalries and the game advertised itself. Learning came through playing, starting off at a junior club or reserve team and working upwards. Now there are four regions, fewer rivalries and academies encouraging conformity in the way the school of hard knocks spawned independence.
Howley said last year that he intended to go back to his old school to see what had gone wrong with a system that produced players with an innate understanding of the game. With Gatland not seeking a renewal of his contract after the 2019 World Cup, Howley is in effect auditioning for the head coach’s job this season. Despite an autumn record of three victories out of four, Wales’s best return, and overseeing the Six Nations title in 2013, he does not enjoy popular support.
Howley, rather than the system in Wales which not so long ago put the emphasis on the elite rather than the grassroots, was held accountable for performances that were lacking in fluency, skill and continuity. Anything other than an emphatic victory over Italy in Rome will add to the discord, a reversion to the bad old days of Welsh rugby when the answer to problems was seen as changing the person at the top.
Whereas Howley was a caretaker in 2013, he is in charge now. He dropped the centre Jamie Roberts in the autumn, the player who more than any other embodied the old way of playing, albeit very effectively, and last month made Alun Wyn Jones captain instead of Sam Warburton, a decision that was seen as Gatland’s but Howley made it happen and his side now has a dose of pragmatism.
Wales may be seen as also-rans this tournament but they are a catalyst away from being potential champions. It is the players, rather than Howley and the coaches, who need to be challenged.
Italy will be fired up and well organised under Conor O’Shea but their team is made up of 13 players from Treviso and Zebre who are inured to losing and another from Bayonne, who are bottom of the Top 14. That leaves the formidable Sergio Parisse but he can do only so much. Wales should not be contemplating defeat but equally they need – and quickly with England six days away – to become the sum of their parts.
