Warren Gatland left Galwegians, Connacht and Ireland all in infinitely better condition than when he inherited them during a near decade of coaching in this country on and off from 1989 to 2001. Yet his coaching CV and methods, often derided by the catch-all phrase 'Warrenball', have been afforded grudging respect.
What warmth and gratitude exist for him in this country seemingly resides mostly in the west, where he retains many good friends and much loyalty. Gatland hasn't always endeared himself since his time here, and he also has a good record against Irish teams, notably Wales' 2011 World Cup quarter-final win in Wellington and Wasps' epic 37-32 Heineken Cup semi-final win over Munster at Lansdowne Road in 2004.
It was after that game that Gatland was asked if he had sympathy for Munster, to which he said he had none given they didn’t have to qualify for the tournament as their English and French rivals did.
He also stirred up some ill-feeling prior to the 2009 meeting in Cardiff, when Ireland were attempting to win their first Grand Slam in 61 years.
"The [Welsh] players' experiences against Ireland and their experiences at provincial level against Leinster and Munster haven't always been the greatest, so they are very motivated," said Gatland. "We've even talked about how, out of all the teams in the Six Nations, the Welsh players dislike the Irish players the most."
Such outspokenness was not typical of his time coaching in Ireland, when players in his charge also recall how little dialogue they had with him. But he was a young coach still cutting his teeth then. With experience, and his many achievements in the game, he grew more comfortable in the public glare, as well as more mischievous. This week Gatland is, as Ronan O’Gara has suggested, likely to deflect attention away from the Welsh players, although he is not in Eddie Jones’ league.
He retracted those 'dislike' comments subsequently, and prior to the round four meeting in the 2011 Six Nations in Cardiff, when Wales ended Ireland's quest for the Grand Slam, said: "There's no bad blood or hard feelings but when you know each other so well, it's like playing against your brother in the back yard. You want to beat him as much as you can and it will be no different on Saturday. There's a lot of rivalry there because the players know each other so well from playing against each other most weeks for their clubs and from the Lions. "
Gatland's appointment as head coach of the Lions for last year's tour of New Zealand received a generally lukewarm response in Ireland, perhaps due to those comments and also the decision to drop Brian O'Driscoll for the third Test in Australia in 2013.
Yet it’s doubtful any coach has ever been better qualified to be head coach of the Lions in New Zealand than Gatland.
In addition to coming from the country and working in Ireland with Galwegians, Connacht and Ireland, he coached in England with Wasps for three years, and with the Welsh national team for a decade. He'd also been an assistant coach on the Lions tour of South Africa, and been head coach for the winning series in Australia in 2013.
Better achievement
When approached by John Feehan, the Lions CEO, and then interviewed by the Lions' board, Gatland was relaxed about the idea of coaching the Lions again to his native country. He hadn't particularly enjoyed the end to the Australian tour, due to the flak that came with that decision not to pick O'Driscoll.
He also fully comprehended the scale of the task in touring New Zealand with scarcely any preparation time, the unprecedented toughness of the itinerary (although he maintained that would ultimately be beneficial) and then facing the back-to-back world champions in a three-Test series, two of which would be in their Eden Park fortress.
As he told the Lions board of directors when interviewed for the job, while he would be honoured to take on the responsibility, if they chose Vern Cotter instead, he'd possibly have 'dodged a bullet'.
In the event, Gatland himself and many others, regard drawing the series from 1-0 down against the All Blacks as a better achievement than four years previously.
This reporter was afforded an insight into Gatland's personality and experiences over the course of the tour when writing his Lions' diary, In the Line of Fire. A tad unhelpfully for the book, he was always typically honest in his press conferences and interviews.
He had been so excited and proud at the prospect of 'going home' with the Lions and, for sure, was sensitive to the personalised campaign against him by the New Zealand Herald.
However, coaching abroad for virtually 20 years, while helping to give him financial security, had meant plenty of family sacrifices, all the more so as their kids, Gabby and Bryn, have moved on to third level education in New Zealand. This is what made the portrayal of him, clown et al, so wounding, and particularly in the build-up to the opening game against the New Zealand Provincial Barbarians when the Herald said Gatland would be "targeting" Bryn, their outhalf.
He also reacted tetchily to mere mention of 'Warrenball', although he does point out that when he was coaching Wasps to three Premiership titles and European Cup triumphs, it was with Alex King at outhalf and a ball-playing inside centre, Stuart Abbot. When with Wales, he had Jamie Roberts at his pomp, so why not use him?
Gatland found the tour exhausting and draining. By the end, he was coughing and spluttering so much he could barely talk. He enjoyed this Lions tour even less than Australia four years previously, and has strongly intimated he won’t be head coach of the Lions again to South Africa in 2021.
‘Gats’ or ‘Gatty’, as he is generally known, has an intuitive understanding of the game and brings an emotional intelligence as well as a tactical brain to his coaching. It’s why he gets the Lions, and can bring together a squad of over 40 players from four different countries as well as a huge backroom staff.
Good company
He likes a beer and is good company. Indeed, the portrayal of him as Grumpy Gatland by the New Zealand Herald was laughably wide of the mark. He is also fiercely loyal.
Hence, he was at his happiest when back at home in Hamilton. As he said in the build-up to the Lions midweek game with the Waikato Chiefs: "If you cut me open I'd probably bleed red, yellow and black. I'm pretty proud of my roots and it's a great place to grow up. I went to school here and played for Waikato, and what I love about Waikato people is that they're incredibly loyal."
Gatland was born and reared in Hamilton. Both his parents, Dave and Kay, came from Waikato, and like almost all Kiwi boys, he began playing barefoot at five years of age with the junior club in Hamilton, Eastern Suburbs. He played 140 games at hooker in a tough, hard-nosed Waikato pack which won the New Zealand Championship in 1992 and the Ranfury Shield in 1993, the year they also beat the Lions 38-10, with Gatland one of the try scorers. These were the three highlights of his playing career.
He also played 17 times for the All Blacks, although never in a Test, as his career coincided with Sean Fitzpatrick’s in the days before tactical replacements. His last tour with the All Blacks was to Britain and Ireland in 1989, whereupon Galwegians launched his coaching career by inviting him to stay on.
At the age of 26, it was Gatland’s first player-coach role.
In 1990-91 Galwegians missed out on qualifying for the second division of the inaugural All-Ireland League in the round-robin play-offs between the four provincial league winners, before repeating the feat and winning promotion to the AIL a year later. In 1993 Gatland returned to New Zealand and his career as a PE teacher while also playing one more year for Waikato before retiring at 30.
That may well have been the extent of his time in Irish rugby but for one fateful phone call from Billy Glynn, then the Connacht chairman of selectors and de facto team manager, in August 1996, when desperately seeking someone to replace Eddie O'Sullivan. He had stepped down as Connacht coach after failing to agree more than another one-year term with the IRFU as his five-year sabbatical from teaching had only one more year to run.
With the Connacht squad due to travel to Stockholm the next day for pre-season training, Glynn had called in to Joe Healy’s offices up the road in Galway, at a loss as to what to do. Healy, a former team-mate of Gatland’s at Galwegians and long-time friend, suggested the club’s former player-coach.
Gatland was coaching a club side, Taupiri, and had been assistant coach of Thames Valley for a couple of years. He spoke with his wife Trudi, and his school principal where he was teaching, and both said: ‘Go for it’.
He flew to Sweden the next day. In his second season with Connacht, Gatland guided them to the European Challenge Cup quarter-finals. He was innovative, and came up with some leftfield ploys, such as 'psycho" in reference to the 13-man lineout, the 'scoop ball' from which the number eight left scrum ball behind his feet for the speedy scrumhalf Conor McGuinness to generally beat the opposition blindside and the 'flipper', when Eric Elwood flicked a one-handed pass behind him for the blindside left-winger, usually Nigel Carolan.
Best thing
Following the resignation of Brian Ashton one game into the 1998 Five Nations, Gatland was appointed Ireland's youngest coach ever, at 33. Some people, such as Glynn, thought it was too soon.
Helped by the emergence of Brian O’Driscoll, results and performances improved, and new players were introduced. But after the 40-29 defeat to New Zealand in November 2001 – only Ireland’s second defeat in eight Tests that year – the IRFU decided not to renew his contract, and O’Sullivan was promoted from assistant coach in his stead.
Gatland always maintained it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Having cut his teeth in Ireland, he was soon appointed Wasps’ assistant coach midway through the 2001-02 season. They were bottom of the Premiership, but won nine of their last 11 matches to finish seventh.
When Nigel Melville left to join Gloucester, Gatland took over as the club's Director of Rugby. With Shaun Edwards aboard as his defence coach, they won three Premierships in a row, a European Challenge Cup and a Heineken Cup.
Gatland returned to New Zealand, coaching Waikato to the Air New Zealand Cup in 2006, their first national title since 1992. Then the Wales RFU appointed him head coach after the 2007 World Cup, when defeats to Australia and Fiji had seen them eliminated in the pool stages.
They'd finished fifth in the Six Nations in the previous two years, whereupon they won the Grand Slam in 2008, and another in 2012. In the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand, Wales beat Ireland in the quarter-finals only to lose 9-8 to France after Alain Rolland sent off captain Sam Warburton in the 19th minute – a decision that will always rankle Gatland. It denied them a final against the jittery All Blacks.
In the 2015 World Cup, Wales helped to knock England out in the pool stages with a 28-25 win at Twickenham, but they were denied another semi-final by a Fourie du Preez try in the 75th minute of the quarter-final against South Africa.
Last Saturday's resilient display at the same venue with a Welsh team missing a cast of Lions revived memories of that pool win. As O'Gara said it was "typical of a Gatland team". Wales also have a good record against Ireland under Gatland. Extracting the win and loss under Rob Howley while Gatland was on his Lions' sabbaticals, in 11 meetings Wales have won six and drawn one.
Having once been among us, this week Gatland again spells danger.
Wales’ record against Ireland under Gatland
2008 – Six Nations – Ireland 12 Wales 16 (Croke Park).
2009 – Six Nations – Wales 15 Ireland 17 (Millennium Stadium).
2010 – Six Nations – Ireland 27 Wales 22 (Croke Park).
2011 – Six Nations – Wales 19 Ireland 13 (Millennium Stadium).
2011 – World Cup quarter-final – Wales 22 Ireland 10 (Wellington).
2012 – Six Nations – Ireland 21 Wales 23 (Aviva Stadium).
2014 – Six Nations – Ireland 26 Wales 3 (Aviva Stadium).
2015 – Six Nations – Wales 23 Ireland 16 (Millennium Stadium).
2015 – RWC warm-up – Wales 21 Ireland 35 (Millennium Stadium).
2015 – RWC warm-up – Ireland 10 Wales 16 (Aviva Stadium).
2016 – Six Nations – Wales 22 Ireland 9 (Principality Stadium).
Overall: Played 11, Wins 6, Draws 1, Losses 4.
