As Warren Gatland prepares Wales to face his native New Zealand for perhaps the final time he says the flurry of blows landed by the local media before the Lions met the All Blacks last summer made him mentally tougher, although there were “one or two people” he would not mind getting into the corner of a room with.
Gatland, who was depicted as a clown by one New Zealand paper before the Lions rallied from 1-0 down to share the series, expects more demeaning caricatures this week but said anyone looking to turn Saturday’s encounter at the Principality Stadium into a feud between him and the All Blacks’ head coach, Steve Hansen, would be wasting time.
“People try to make a lot of stuff about Steve and me,” Gatland said. “From my point of view there are no issues between us. I have a huge amount of respect for what he has achieved in the game and the success he has had as an All Black coach. He has been absolutely outstanding. I look forward to catching up with him on Saturday and having a beer after the game. In recent years on a couple of occasions we have gone out as two management groups for meals during the week. The pressures we are under are not as a result of our relationship but about people trying to stoke the fires. He understands that; I understand that.
“If there is [media] criticism of me this week I won’t be responding because you cannot win. At some stage I will be dressed up as a clown again; I will just take it on the chin and move on. That is the way it is and the way it has gone. It was tough [on the Lions tour] and I said so but Kiwis understand when you back someone into a corner they come out fighting. There was no way I was going to allow something to get the better of me and I got mentally tougher.
“I felt like I was in a boxing match and was going to come out on top. No one was going to split the squad but there was some pretty underhand stuff going on. There are one or two people I would like to get into a corner of a room on their own with me but that might wait for another day.”
Gatland was speaking after making an unscheduled appearance at Wales’s media briefing on Monday. He usually fronts up on the day of the team announcement but he wanted to clarify what happened towards the end of the match against Georgia on Saturday after the prop Tomas Francis was sent to the sin-bin in the last minute and, with the visitors awarded a penalty close to the Wales line, the match went to uncontested scrums because the other tighthead, Leon Brown, was suffering from cramp after being replaced by Francis.
“It wasn’t us trying to pull a fast one or anything like that,” Gatland said. “We didn’t try and manipulate anything in terms of the laws. It was different to what France did against us at the end of this year’s Six Nations because they had a prop come off injured while another had been warming up. Leon’s calves were tight and there is video evidence to show he was injured. We were not trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes.”
Wales’s laboured victory over a team who had never defeated a tier one opponent did nothing to suggest they will arrest a 64-match losing streak against New Zealand on Saturday but back in 2014, one week after they had hung on to beat Fiji 17-13 having failed to score in the second half, Wales led the All Blacks going into the final quarter before leaking three tries.
New Zealand were holding on against Scotland last Saturday against opponents they had never lost to. “They will be disappointed with that game,” said Gatland. “Scotland took it to them but New Zealand still won and had that x-factor when they needed to turn it on. I have never seen an All Black team that is vulnerable. They will be disappointed they did not play better with the quality and depth they have but they coped with the pressure and won that game. That is what it is all about.
“The All Blacks have made comments themselves [that] they have dominated the game for too long. People want to see the All Blacks come under pressure and teams pushing them close. We’ve had that in the last few weeks with Australia beating them and South Africa and Scotland pushing them close. It’s good for rugby that sides are able to push the number one team in the world really closely. We expect the All Blacks to front up against us, hurting a little but knowing they have not played to their potential, but we have got to put them under pressure and play some rugby.”
Cane and able
Sam Cane has vowed there will be no repeat of the attitude that nearly resulted in New Zealand losing against Scotland for the first time last weekend when they face Wales on Saturday in their final Test of the year. The match in Cardiff will be New Zealand’s 15th of 2017, including the victory against the Barbarians at Twickenham at the start of November, and the flanker Cane said the focus was on enjoying their final week together as a squad and making sure their attitude was right.
“Last Saturday was a reminder that every team we are up against go out there to play the game of their lives,” he said. “We need to play to a really high standard. We turned up in Edinburgh and maybe our attitude was just a fraction off. It does not take much and this week we have to make sure we are exactly where we need to be.
“Sometimes you can gauge if the attitude is not quite there, but even if you say something as part of the leadership group to get it back on track, it is often too late. The prep and the build-up to go out there and win little battles takes all week. It is pretty tough to just turn up and flick a switch. It was yes and no whether we did that last week as it is different for individuals. There were a couple of guys who thought ‘not sure’.”
Cane said that the review of the 22-17 victory, which was secured when Beauden Barrett made a try-saving tackle on Stuart Hogg in the final minute, was not a video nasty. “We did not look at much footage,” he said. “There was a lot of discussion around different players’ processes in terms of turning up at kick-off to rip into it at a 10/10 level. Sometimes in the final week of the year less is more in terms of the training load. The key is to turn up on Saturday with a full tank of energy, together with the mental stuff.”
It will mark a return to Wales for the New Zealand head coach, Steve Hansen, who spent three years in Cardiff from 2001. “I have not had an inkling that he is treating it differently to any other Test,” Cane said. “Steve is one of the most competitive people I know. It does not matter who we are playing, he is keen to win.
“We want to finish the season on the right note. We have learned a lot about ourselves this year, adversity teaches you a few things. We have been in pretty tough places in some games and guys had to step into roles they are not used to in this team. Next year we will have 40 or 50 quality players with experience of Test rugby and I think we are in a good place.” Paul Rees
