HAVING watched his team demolish the Scots on the field Warren Gatland, the Welsh coach, dismantled the visitors off it with some strong and, you have to say, wholly justified comments on the rank awfulness of Frank Hadden's stultifyingly negative and creatively bankrupt gameplan.
"There was only one team trying to play rugby out there," said the Kiwi, and just in case anybody was in any doubt, he spelled it out for us: "It was the team in red. Apart from a couple of minutes near the end Scotland never got near our line."
Gatland gave Hadden a verbal shoeing, just as his counterpart in France, Marc Lievremont, did last week and it was richly deserved. He spoke of the miniscule threat the Scots possessed. "They made it pretty easy for us. They were just picking and going off the rucks and never threw the ball wide and never threatened us. They never put us under any pressure at all." Gatland looked half-bemused by it all. Asked if he thought Scotland were harshly treated by the television match official (TMO), Carlo DaMasco, who incorrectly awarded Wales their third try – and Shane Williams his second – Gatland responded with a shrug and a grin and a remark that spoke volumes about his thoughts on how Scotland performed on the day. "To be honest, I don't really feel sorry for Scotland."
The Scottish coach had some explaining to do but he's a rugby man not an escapologist and wriggling his way out of this was never on the cards. We just hoped that Hadden wouldn't go down a well-trodden path of finding excuses. Alas, after about 10 seconds of his introductory remarks he was in full flow, citing DaMasco as a key force and harping back to Twickenham last season when another TMO decision went against his side.
Hadden suggested that the game was still there to be won before Williams' controversial score in the 68th minute. In theory, it was. Scotland trailed by just five points, after all. But Hadden was fooling himself if he thought it was a decisive moment. If the visitors possessed one ounce of attacking threat beyond Chris Paterson's boot you might have agreed with him. But they didn't and Hadden's suggestion that the game was still there for the taking was risible.
He blamed the TMO, he complained about the short preparation time (guess what, Frank, there are no more hours in the day in Wales than there are in Scotland) and then singled out John Barclay, saying he had been out-classed by Martyn Williams. Indeed he had, but why draw attention to it when so many Scots were out-played, why make the kid feel any worse than he already did? It was crass and unnecessary.
The reaction to Gatland's wounding words was not Hadden's finest moment. "Praise indeed," he said of the Kiwi's criticism. "It's not our job to entertain the crowd. We knew what we had to do and we tried to do it and had we held on to the ball we might have found ourselves in a better position." This is Frank's line, laughable as it is, and he's sticking to it.
How sad it all was yesterday. This Scotland team is better than their performances suggest. They are playing an awfully long way short of their optimum – with the exception of Jason White whose mighty powers have deserted him and whose place in the team must now be questioned. Much like Hadden's ability to lift his men out of their slump.
Scotland played conservative, plodding rugby and they played it badly. Hadden can't be held wholly responsible for the gamut of errors – the spilled ball count was astronomical – but it was his gameplan yesterday and, as Gatland remarked, it was all to do with forward drives up the middle and field position and Chris Paterson's boot. It was a yawn fest in blue. And when the errors started coming – that took two minutes when the opening Scottish lineout was ballooned out the back and seized on by Martyn Williams – it got ugly.
Preying on Wales's poor discipline brought them 15 points from penalties but it was never going to bring them victory, not when Wales had the ambition to go for tries, claiming three. Well, two good ones and a dodgy one that didn't have the impact on the game Hadden claimed it did.
Wales were no great shakes, a point firmly made by Gatland and his assistants in the aftermath. Indeed, for the first hour they were as lacking in inspiration and accuracy as the Scots but there was a key difference; Wales came to win, Scotland came to keep the score down. This is becoming a theme in the Hadden era. Know how many tries Hadden's team have scored in their last five Test matches? One. A scrambling, ugly effort for Chris Cusiter at the fag-end of the World Cup defeat to Argentina. One try in five Tests. It's one try in six games if you don't count the facile victories over Portugal and Romania in the World Cup.
Hadden is aware of the problem but has he any clue how to find the solution? He's got three games left, two of them away from home. We are fast approaching a time when some bold decisions on the future direction of this team are going to have to be made.
The full article contains 920 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
