How Wales won the Grand Slam

Mar 16 2008 Wales on Sunday

Gatland feared giving Italy a hiding

Wales 47-8 Italy

PATIENCE really is a virtue – as Wales proved against Italy.

The old rugby adage about ‘you have to earn the right to go wide’ summed up the Welsh approach to this game.

Since their introduction to the Six Nations, the ever-improving Italians have caused Welsh sides all manner of problems.

They love the physical confrontation and the current side – under former South African coach Nick Mallett – is no different.

The Azzurri were strong, we thought, where Wales were weak. Not any more.

For, while the rest of us travelled to Cardiff in trepidation about whether Wales could match Italian power, Warren Gatland – who kept faith with his rotation policy by recalling Dwayne Peel and Stephen Jones at half-back – was already contemplating the size of the Welsh victory.

He had told his coaching staff after the team’s final run through on the Friday before the game that he feared for the Italians.

He turned to right-hand man Shaun Edwards and said, prophetically: “That session was pretty scary. We could beat Italy by 40 points.”

That is how well Wales were responding to a brutal and intense new ‘training regime’.

Gatland and Edwards had come up with a game-plan to expose the Italians’ lumbering pack. Wales smashed into the visitors, refused to kick the ball off the field and ran them ragged at every opportunity.

Their 13-8 lead at half-time wasn’t a true reflection of a pretty ugly first half.

This was the performance that made an absolute mockery of the idea that Wales weren’t fit enough for Test rugby.

And Edwards, for one, knew what to expect in the second half. Tom Shanklin – winning his 50th cap – raced in from the halfway line and Shane Williams and Lee Byrne grabbed a brace of tries each.

“We knew what was going to happen in the last 20 minutes of that game,” said Edwards. “We had tried to keep the ball on the park for most of the game and we knew Italy would tire. So the tactics worked to an absolute dream and we ran away with the game in the last 10 minutes.”

Courtesy of a record victory over Italy and a biggest winning margin in a Six Nations game at the Millennium Stadium, the Welsh strut had now become a full-blown swagger.

Five months from the humiliation and embarrassment of being knocked out of the 2007 World Cup in France, the same group of players had redeemed themselves.

Those who had talked about the Grand Slam success of 2005 being a fluke were suddenly nowhere to be seen.

Gatland, Edwards and their ‘axis of intensity’ and own brand of ‘organised violence’ had brought a nation to its knees – in worship.

They had restored a nation’s faith in their national game; but the question on everybody’s lips was: how had they done it?

Gatland and Edwards were totally bemused by the question.

They had done what they had done at London Wasps. The new Wales coach was adamant there was no magic wand. All he had done was brought in standards, trained at intensity and simplified the game plan.

The dynamic duo of Gatman and boy wonder Shaun may be natural-born winners, but they have the utmost respect for rugby’s old fashioned values.

And Edwards gives a more revealing insight into what they asked from every Welsh player.

The Welsh love the age-old and boring debate about who will wear the fabled No 10 shirt, but these two coaches, steeped in rugby tradition, couldn’t give a jot about such romantic twaddle.

Gatland, in particular, is bemused by Wales’ obsession with the fly-half role.

And for Edwards it is the dark arts of the game that hold his interest.

“My abiding memory of that Italy game was Ian Gough at the final whistle,” said Edwards.

“He came into the dressing room and was ashen-faced, absolutely spent and had pushed his body to the limit.

“He had hit 47 rucks, defended well and showed what a team game rugby is.

“We all like to see the guys like Shane Williams do what they do – I love it as much as anybody – but they can’t do it without the work of the Ian Goughs of this world.”

Desperate not to choke at Croke - Page 4