Gatland hits the 50-mark for Wales

PETER JACKSON

THE MAN TRULY IN THE KNOW

Unless they change the habit of a lifetime in Australia over the next fortnight, Wales will be saddled with their longest losing run for more than 20 years. Should the fifth series in Wallaby country starting in Sydney on Saturday go the way of the previous four, the visitors’ default position about preparing for the 2027 World Cup will sound all the more like a lame excuse for losing Test matches.

The seven already consigned to history, from Argentina in the quarter-final last autumn to South Africa last week via a barren Six Nations, have been taken on the chin with commendable stoicism by those fans understanding the critical condition of their national sport.

Even they can only take so much. Their tolerance is unlikely to last much longer should their team lose in Sydney and again in Melbourne the following week without any visible signs of improvement.

At the World Cup in Lyon last September, Wales didn’t merely beat the Wallabies. They walloped the team Eddie Jones sent out 40-6, a thrashing which exposed their reputation to a trashing, justifiably so.

A great deal has happened since then. For a start, the Aussies have hired Joe Schmidt, the New Zealander who put Ireland on the road to the top of the world rankings in a fashion which prompted one disaffected squad member to describe him as ‘the ultimate control freak’.

Wales have lost so many of their rampaging team from the triumphant occasion in France that only one third will be involved next week: Liam Williams, Nick Tompkins, Gareth Davies, Gareth Thomas and Aaron Wainwright. None of those trying to keep track of the comings and goings will be the least bit surprised to learn that so few remain.

Over the last seven matches Warren Gatland has picked a grand total of 50 players. Three more will be itching to join that list: Gloucester’s 20-year-old wing Josh Hathaway, Cardiff hooker Efan Daniel and Regan Grace from Port Talbot. That he has yet to play a competitive game of Rugby Union makes his inclusion unusual to say the least.

Grace more than lived up to his name in Super League, touching down 88 times in 141 matches for St Helens before switching codes two years ago in the Top 14 at Racing. Injury plagued his time there that he left the Parisians without playing a match.

Now at Bath, he has yet to appear in the Premiership which raises the prospect of his first senior game of Union being for Wales, probably against Queensland after the two Tests. In that event, Grace will have made a faster entry into the Wales team than Jason Robinson made into England’s more than 20 years ago after his transfer from Wigan to Sale.

While Robinson joined a squad sweeping all before it en route to winning the World Cup, Grace joins one struggling to avoid the indignity of disappearing from the top ten of the official rankings. Far better Welsh teams have endured serial failures to win a series down under.

“Grace scored 88 times in 141 Super League matches before switching codes two years ago”

Speed merchant: Regan Grace, in training with Bath, has yet to play for the Premiership side
PICTURE: Getty Images

In 1978 Grand Slam Wales, minus Phil Bennett and Gareth Edwards, lost the first Test in Brisbane and the second at the Sydney Cricket Ground by which time their back row was in such a mess that JPR Williams had to start as an emergency flanker.

They lost the next series 2-0 in 1996, 2-0 again in 2007 and 3-0 five years later. Wales have lost all 11 Tests against the Wallabies in Australia since winning the first, a one-off match 55 years ago which happened to be Keith Jarrett’s last before his exit to Rugby League.

Should the tenth best team on the World Rugby list lose another series to the ninth best team, the party line will be trotted out parrot-fashion about preparing for the World Cup as if that somehow makes the growing pile of defeats a worthy sacrifice in a noble long-term cause.

The Welsh Rugby Union declared the other day that its minimum objective is to reach the semi-finals. Why, instead of this obsession with the World Cup, did they not tackle the more immediate matter of the Six Nations and address the more immediate concern of avoiding another wooden spoon?

Instead of addressing that, WRU chairman Richard Collier-Wood preferred to look far beyond the next Six Nations and the two after that. “You’ve seen the work Warren and his team have done in bringing new players forward,’’ he said. “Frankly, that’s very exciting. We’re on a path to success towards the 2027 World Cup.’’

Right now, Welsh fans the world over would be more in tune with the lyrics of The Saw Doctors’ song: To win just once, that would be enough…

If that’s asking too much over the next two weekends, Wales will be two more losses away from matching their worst run of consecutive defeats, 11 under Steve Hansen, now Sir Steven, in the run-up to the 2003 World Cup. That, of course, was a lost cause but he did win two of the next three with the All Blacks.