Warren Gatland’s final farewell to Wales started with boos and finished with booze. In between were cheers for the New Zealander whose 12 years as the national side’s head coach transported supporters back to the 1970s when success was taken for granted and the game was the country’s main export.
Gatland, who flies to New Zealand on Sunday to take charge of the Chiefs, signed off at the Principality Stadium as head coach of a Barbarians side that looked ill-equipped to contain a Wales team which, even without luminaries such as Alun Wyn Jones, George North, Jonathan Davies and Taulupe Faletau, looked too coated in their former head coach’s varnish to start his successor Wayne Pivac’s reign with anything other than a resounding victory.
And so it looked with 19 minutes to go when Wales scored their sixth try to go 40-19 ahead. The final quarter of a match is customarily the time when the legs of Barbarians tend to go in different directions from their bodies, the end of a week which revisits the amateur era in terms of team bonding and socialising; but this time they had something in reserve.
Gatland’s Wales were chiselled from granite and refused to accept defeat even when it was flaunting itself at them. If Pivac thought about leaning back in the chair in the hospitality box that Gatland occupied for so long and waiting for the approbation as the television cameras panned the executive section for well-known faces, he was soon jerked forward.
The Barbarians, inspired by Schalk Brits, who like the hooker he replaced, Rory Best, was making his final appearance as a player and determined to make the most of it, scored two tries in three minutes to reduce the deficit to a converted try. That left Wales needing to kick a penalty three minutes from time to confirm their 43-33 victory.
A section of the crowd booed Justin Tipuric for going for goal but a lot more would have expressed their dissatisfaction had the Barbarians drawn level. Boos had greeted the playing of the Barbarians’ adopted anthem, God Save the Queen, as the teams lined up before the start. There were queries on social media about its relevance given that Best was the only player disposed to sing it, but the club was founded in a Bradford oyster bar in the days when Queen Victoria was on the throne.
The idea of the Barbarians was that they would commit themselves to attacking rugby to the point of indulging in frolics but, as the 25th anniversary of professionalism dawns, the approach has an anachronistic feel. There were 11 tries here but it was no celebration of the cerebral side of the game.
The referee, Nigel Owens, awarded 23 penalties and could have sent off two Barbarians – Andre Esterhuizen for a dangerous tackle on Josh Adams which prompted a melee and Marco van Staden for what would have been a second yellow card, as the official realised in between fetching the card out of his pocket and flourishing it.
The Barbarians were not the most suitable fit for Gatland, a pragmatist rather than a preener, but they provided his only means of saying goodbye to the Cardiff crowd. He spent the match in hospitality box 22, sat next to Robbie Deans, his opposite number on the Lions tour to Australia in 2013, expressionless for the most part until the camera kept panning on him in the final 10 minutes for the 62,138 crowd to cheer.
“It was a special day but not an emotional one because I wanted to enjoy it,” said Gatland, who took some 90 minutes to get off the pitch at the end and make the after-match media conference. “I think the way we finished showed Wales, who were positive, the need to achieve a balance between playing and overplaying. It is about being smart.”
