Warren Gatland may be entering the final year of his contract with Wales but he is determined to go out at the very top and believes his side are contenders to win the World Cup next year.
Gatland, a normally inscrutable New Zealander, became emotional when asked how much it would mean to him to leave Wales on a high. In the 12 years of professionalism before he took over as head coach at the end of 2007, Wales’s record had largely been poor, the 2005 grand slam standing out among a catalogue of record defeats, but under him they have enjoyed their most successful period since the 1970s.
Interview: Warren Gatland
“There is a certain amount of pressure,” said Gatland, who has led Wales to three Six Nations titles as well as a World Cup semi-final in 2011. “The last thing I want is for Wales to have a poor Six Nations and World Cup because we have put in a huge amount of work in the last 12 years.
“I’m bricking myself about the next year because I want it to be a good one. I am focused on doing the best job I can having loved my period in Wales. It is time to move on and I want to leave these shores with my head held high. That makes the next 12 months pretty important, not so much November and next summer’s warm-ups but the Six Nations and the World Cup, the competitions we are judged on.”
Gatland is the longest-serving coach in Wales’s history – most of his predecessors tended to be fired before a World Cup campaign – but he does not believe he would have survived so long had he not taken year-long sabbaticals to prepare the British & Irish Lions for their 2013 and 2017 tours.
“That time away was good for me and it refreshed me,” he said. “If I had not had that change of environment, I do not think I would have been here for as long. I think our record in the Six Nations and win-loss ratio has been pretty outstanding from a Wales perspective and the way we have performed in World Cups has been admirable. We would like to have done a bit better against the southern hemisphere teams.
“It has been a challenge in the past with players coming into camp from regions who had not done as well as we would have liked, but the relationship between the Welsh Rugby Union and the regions is positive, which is pleasing from a rugby perspective.
“I think it will be an open World Cup. The All Blacks are a level ahead but there is not much between the other teams and we have more strength in depth than we did in 2015.”