Warren Gatland hopes to ‘draw a line’ under troubled week for Wales

It has been a long week in Welsh rugby, and the hardest part has not even started. On Thursday the Wales head coach, Warren Gatland, spoke of wanting to “draw a line in the sand” before Saturdays match against England, which he admitted will be “absolutely massive” for both teams given that his side have already lost to Ireland and Scotland and Steve Borthwick’s still have to play Ireland and France.

However, even Gatland seemed to be struggling to move on. Hard as he tried, he could not disguise his irritation at the position he has been in this week, or his frustration about the state that Welsh rugby union is in. He stopped short of criticising his players, and reiterated his support for their cause, but did say that he felt they had been “a little bit impulsive” in pushing for a strike, and that they could have given the authorities “more warning” about what they wanted.

“It’s been a challenge, there’s no doubt about that,” he said. “There could probably have been a period where they could have laid down their demands.” Gatland felt it all came to a head “pretty quickly”, which meant “there was a lot of pressure put on the union and the regions to get things resolved”.

He also revealed that the players had asked him to delay his team announcement, which was due on Tuesday, by 48 hours, to protect them from being put on the spot by the media during negotiations. That put Gatland in an awkward position because he has five England-based players in the squad, and he needed to notify their clubs as to whether they were going to be involved this weekend or not. “So that was something we had to consider and debate,” he said, with weary understatement. “There has been a certain amount of uncertainty.”

Now Gatland wants the