Gatland lays down challenge to his stars

WARREN GATLAND spent the first part of his tenure as Wales coach trying to build morale.

Mission accomplished, he now has to keep his side grounded in reality as they pursue back-to-back RBS Six Nations Grand Slam titles, but Gatland also believes reality and ambition can go hand in glove.

In advance of this weekend’s Championship opener against Scotland at Murrayfield, the coach said: “It is a potential banana skin, and a game we could easily lose. But we’re excited about going there, whether it’s right or wrong, we’re down as favourites, and we have to treat that as a positive, embrace it and react positively to it.”

Gatland accepts that Wales will now be targeted by the other participating nations. He’s also well aware that it takes an exceptional team to put Grand Slams back to back.

But he has laid down the challenge to the players: “If they want to keep improving, if they want to be seen as one of the better teams in the world, they must be prepared to accept that it will get harder, not easier.

“As a group, we have spoken about it, we have accepted it’s a pressure that we could do without — but that it is also one that we simply have to deal with and see how we cope.”

He won’t have any argument from his captain Ryan Jones, who has seen high and low points with Wales over the last couple of years.

Jones has savoured the joy of winning in Murrayfield but had to endure the chastening experience of having Welsh fans turn their backs on the team at Edinburgh airport two years ago.

“That is something I will never forget. Expectation is always big at home, we should know that by now, but it is something we can’t afford to hide away from. We have talked about it but we’re determined not to let a tag of expectation get to us.

“We have to make sure we stick to doing the things we believe in, to trust the path we want to go on, staying honest to ourselves and to the other players. With the group we have, I don’t think any external tag will affect what we’re doing within the camp.

“There are enough guys that have been both successful and not so successful; the key thing for us is to ensure the group really has matured and learned from the mistakes of the past.

“The exciting thing is we’re asking questions of ourselves, making demands, wondering how good we’re capable of becoming. I don’t think we have peaked yet, and I think there is more to come. That’s the motivation for this campaign; it doesn’t matter who we play, we just have to approach every game exactly the same, we have to get our own house in order if we want to move forward.”

It’s an exciting time for Jones, who has watched both the Ospreys and Cardiff win places in the upcoming Heineken Cup quarter-finals. All in all, he feels it’s been a very promising start to the season, even if he would like to have taken more than one southern hemisphere scalp this past autumn.

“There is a confidence and belief backed by how the regions have done and how key individual players have performed. Hopefully we can draw on that form and last year’s success,” he said.

Jones, along with Ireland’s Paul O’Connell and Brian O’Driscoll, has been touted as a potential Lions captain, but he doesn’t even want to think about that. “Look, I had my heart set on going to the World Cup a couple of years ago and had that dream taken away from me after sustaining a shoulder injury.

“I’m just glad to be part of this Welsh team, things like Lions tours take care of themselves.

“In relation to the Lions, you have to be fit, have to be playing well and, anyway, selections are always subjective, so we will have to wait and see.”

Gatland will be relieved to hear his captain want to talk only about the present. He’s acutely aware of the danger involved when players take their eyes off the ball.

He stressed: “Nobody could possibly work harder than we will over the next couple of months. The guys have applied themselves already, but we can only look to the Scottish match for now.

“If we lose that one, we can’t win the Grand Slam; then we have follow up games against England (home) and France (away), so it could get even tougher.

“The great thing about this current tournament is that not everyone is talking about England and France as potential winners. This one appears to be wide open, and it’s great for both the tournament and the game.”