SAM WARBURTON WAS Clark Kent. More than anyone else, the former Welsh captain did a convincing impression of Mr Ordinary until he changed out of his work clothes. Then as soon as Cardiff blue was swapped for Welsh red, Kent turned into Superman.
He wasn’t the only one. How many people remember what Martyn Williams did in a Cardiff Blues shirt? Not the same number who’ll tell you about the contribution he made for Wales. The list goes on. Dan Lydiate, Gethin Jenkins, Josh Adams – unremarkable club careers, superb international ones.
“I played with Josh at Worcester, a talented and prolific performer for sure,” wrote Donncha O’Callaghan in his beautifully evocative piece on Welsh rugby for The Times last year. “But with Wales, he scores tries I don’t think he’d score for Worcester. You may think there is little room for magic in modern professional sport. Then you look at the Wales team.”
Here logic is turned on its head. In every other country, a good club player is often a mediocre international. In Wales, the opposite is true. The nation that won grand slams in 2019, 2012, 2008 and 2005 has never delivered a Champions Cup winning side.
Worse still, since 2011, they haven’t got close, Welsh clubs managing just three Champions Cup knock-out appearances in this period whereas Ireland’s provinces, across the same timeframe, have made it to the last eight on 22 occasions.
We could go on. Since the formation of the Celtic League in 2001, Ireland’s four provinces have won or finished runners-up in the competition 22 times; 12 more than the Welsh regions have managed. In Europe, it’s seven Champions Cup triumphs to Ireland, none to Wales.
And yet, at international level it’s Wales who’ve made it to two of the last three World Cup semi-finals, Wales who’ve lost just three of their last nine meetings against Ireland in this championship, Wales who’ve won four grand slams to Ireland’s two this century.
“This is their everything,” O’Callaghan wrote.
But is it?
Lee Byrne studies the stats, sees where the conversation is going and refuses to gloss over the reality. The period when he was an Osprey was when Mike Cuddy was their chief investor – a time when ‘no expense was spared’. “You look at the players we brought in, Tommy Bowe, Jerry Collins,” says Byrne.
“We had quality and depth. Now, I’m ashamed to say, there are times when I look at the squad lists (of the Welsh clubs) and there are a lot of names there that I don’t know much about. Then you look at Leinster and the depth they have and you know they’re on a different plain.
“Leinster can afford to lose an international player because they’ve someone really good to replace him with. When a Welsh club loses an international, it’s a big deal. We don’t have a similar level of cover.
“But even though we have been pretty poor in European competition for some time now, that doesn’t matter when you play for Wales. Once you are in an elite international environment, surrounded by elite coaches and players, you don’t care about a few bad club results.”
You wonder how much Warburton and his buddies cared when they rolled into the Galway Sportsground, Musgrave Park or the RDS. “With the best will in the world, even a European club final isn’t remotely on the same level as a Six Nations match,” Warburton wrote in his autobiography. “I didn’t play quite as intensely for Cardiff as I did for Wales.”
It showed. When Warburton was captaining Wales to back-to-back championships in 2012 and 2013, Cardiff and Scarlets lost 75 per cent of the games they played against Munster and Leinster. “I remember a Pro12 game against Leinster at the RDS in 2012,” Warburton wrote, “when we were 40-3 down at half-time, eventually losing 59-22. Jamie Roberts was playing for us and chatting to him afterwards we agreed it was the most embarrassing game we had ever played in.”
Yet it never made a difference. Rather than deflate Welsh confidence, it became a motivator. “All those defeats with their regions stung,” Warren Gatland says. “They used it as motivation when they came up against Ireland in the Six Nations. It wasn’t bad as such, I’d say they were envious the Irish guys were doing so well with the clubs. This was their chance to correct it.”
But it was bad – for Ireland. Gatland’s spikiness would often come out in pre-match press-conferences. “You’re always looking for an edge,” he said, “and I remember saying something once before an Ireland game that got picked up in the papers. As a result, it seemed to change the way they played. That made me think, ‘right, okay, I can do that again’.
“From what I was told, in the week of our matches against Ireland, Joe (Schmidt, the former Ireland coach) was at his most intense. I don’t know why.”
Warburton and Byrne know, the former Welsh captain saying the Ireland match was always bigger for him than the England one. “There was a feeling among our group that the Irish players were a little bit over-confident, which never went down well, but there was always something different about this week leading into an Ireland match,” Warburton wrote in his newspaper column.
“For Cardiff, I remember thinking we were no match for Leinster. But at international level it is very different. I was proud that in my eight starts against Ireland we won five matches and drew one.”
It isn’t hard for Byrne to pinpoint the reasons why there is such a disparity between club and country. This season, there have been 11 games between the Irish provinces and the Welsh regions, 10 of those matches ending in Irish victories. As for today’s match, Byrne can’t call a winner.
“Two things are relevant here,” the former Wales full back says. “One, you have the IRFU leading the way in terms of their player-support system. That has gone a long way in helping their provinces do well. Things are better now but I remember playing in Wales when we were flogged to death.
“But for me there is one big reason why our national team have been so consistent for so long – and that’s Warren Gatland. We didn’t have the 100-year legacy of the All Blacks. Up until Warren came in, we hadn’t had great success, bar the 2005 season, for about 30 years.
“In 2006 and 2007, we finished fifth in the Six Nations; we got knocked out of the pool stages of the ’07 World Cup. Then Warren arrives and we win a grand slam straight off.
“He put in structures and a superb backroom team. He changed our mindset. Every time we played, we believed we could win under him. Before that, we went out thinking we could lose. I’d say the job he did was the best by anyone in Welsh rugby history.”
But Gatland’s gone, Wayne Pivac’s here. Does this suggest a return to pre-2008 days – Ireland winning six of the eight clashes between these teams from 2000 to 2007?
“I wouldn’t think it,” says Byrne. “From what I’ve seen, Wayne’s backroom is arguably as good as Warren’s. He’s an excellent coach and is building on the excellent structures that Gats put in place. We’ve come too far as a nation to go back. That simply won’t happen. We can’t afford to let it.”
