The back page of the South Wales Evening Post newspaper on March 5, 1999, still sticks in the memory, featuring as it did a picture of Graham Henry mocked up as Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses, complete with cigar in hand, alongside a ‘Who dares wins’ headline, a modest twist on one of the wheeler dealer’s favourite sayings and a line the then Wales coach had used during the build-up to the game with France in Paris that weekend close on a quarter of a century ago.
The mood was catching.
Asked if he was daunted at the prospect of taking on the French, who had beaten Wales 51-0 the previous season, the not-easily-fazed hooker Garin Jenkins replied: “Why should I be? We are going out there to play a game of rugby. No-one’s going to be singing The Old Rugged Cross at the end of it.”
Wales, who had lost their opening two matches in the Five Nations that year, duly went out and played a startling brand of attacking rugby that hoisted them to a shock 34-33 victory, scoring more points in the process than they had managed in a single game in Paris since 1909.
Positive messaging: it can help instil confidence and Warren Gatland, a former schoolteacher, will know as much.
It’s presumably why he opted for an upbeat take on Wales’s prospects for the Six Nations that starts this weekend, telling reporters at the tournament launch: “Write us off at your peril.”
A few days later, some indeed were prepared to take their chances when assessing the outlook for a side who have lost their last 12 Tests. Previewing the coming championship, The Guardian asked: “Could we really be looking at 17 defeats in a row? Alas, it seems likelier than not.”
Predictions have been almost uniformly bleak from a Welsh perspective, with six of the seven this writer saw on Sunday tipping Gatland’s team to finish bottom of the table. The other one? Lawrence Dallaglio backed them to pull up in fifth. Does that qualify as writing them off? Given Wales’s record as serial losers in 2024, some will think not. But a fifth-place finish would likely leave Gatland fighting to save his job.
Any assessment of the France class of 2025 has to start with Antoine Dupont, the foremost rugby player of the age and an individual who leaves a mark on close on every game he plays.
The Red Dragons start the campaign with a date against France in Paris on Friday evening. Their Six Nations record at Stade de France isn’t bad, with six wins from 13 visits to the stadium in Saint Denis, but France defeated New Zealand in the autumn and Top 14 sides have been tearing it up in the Champions Cup: Toulouse put 80 points on Leicester recently and have been described as ‘arguably the finest team rugby has seen’, but Bordeaux Begles are none too shabby, either, averaging 54 points a game in Europe this term and heading the French championship.
But any assessment of the France class of 2025 has to start with Antoine Dupont, the foremost rugby player of the age and an individual who leaves a mark on close on every game he plays in the way that previous-generation greats such as Gareth Edwards, Jonah Lomu, Richie McCaw, Dan Carter and Serge Blanco did.
How good is he? Recency bias suggests we should hold fire before feting the Toulouse scrum-half as the greatest player of them all, but right now his game is touching stratospheric heights. A defence can do everything right when facing him yet in an instant, and through no defender’s fault, can still appear to have done everything wrong.
He will be Wales’s problem on Friday, but France are far from a one-man team, with threats across the backline and a formidable pack, plus significant depth that allows them to maintain momentum for the full 80.
But at least Wales will be unburdened by expectation.
Gatland made the point that France have been slow starters in the tournament in the past, and there is an element of truth in what he says.
Last year they were trounced by Ireland in game one, while the previous campaign they made heavy weather of beating Italy. But they can also boast four wins out of their last five opening-weekend fixtures, including a 50-10 demolition job on the Italians in 2021.
Wales can’t bank too much on catching France in slumber mode. The assumption should be that Fabien Galthie’s team will bring their A game to the table, as they did when hammering Japan 52-12 in the first game of the autumn.
Gatland may feel the clash in Rome offers his team their best chance of a win over the coming six weeks.
But maybe it’s the round-two match against Italy that will prove defining. Benetton’s recent win over La Rochelle underlined how much Italian rugby has improved, while the national team not only defeated Wales last year but also downed Scotland and drew with France. Nonetheless, Gatland may feel the clash in Rome offers his team their best chance of a win over the coming six weeks.
Might a successful ambush of England at the Principality Stadium on the final weekend of the championship be possible? Such a turn of events isn’t unimaginable, with the Red Rose brigade not exactly in peak shape themselves, performing inconsistently in last year’s Six Nations and losing five out of their last six matches, albeit three of those were against New Zealand and one against South Africa.
Better English sides than the one coached by Steve Borthwick have found it hard to win in Cardiff, but it goes without saying Wales will have to raise their performance levels hugely from the mediocrity on display throughout November.
Gatland’s team will start as underdogs against Ireland on the third weekend, even with home advantage, and the same will apply when they face Scotland in Edinburgh on March 8, though the Scots will miss their off-limits backline leader Sione Tuipulotu, however much some north of Hadrian’s Wall try to pretend otherwise.
Undoubtedly, Wales are not helped by the state of the Welsh game generally. The well-documented issues related to development of players, finance, mismanagement and a jumbled assessment of priorities have left the sport on the western side of the Severn Bridge in a mess with many potential bumps still to be negotiated on the road back to respectability.
Maybe the main concern in the squad Gatland will draw his team from is at tighthead, where there is no-one with a reputation for power scrummaging, an immediate issue for Adam Jones when he surveys the contents of his in-tray after joining the coaching team.
It was a minor surprise that Donald Trump didn’t have his say about Max Llewellyn’s Wales squad omission during his inaugural address as US president. Everyone else seems to have had their two pence worth.
Is it asking too much for the Welsh scrum to be transformed under the new man in a matter of days? Absolutely it is, but if Jones can add value to the operation over the campaign, with his technical knowledge and uniquely pitched interpersonal skills, his recruitment will have been worthwhile.
Wales are also without Dewi Lake and Ryan Elias, which weakens them at hooker, while they could miss the lineout expertise of the injured Adam Beard. There is also a lack of experience at fly-half, while 50 randomly chosen people might all have different views if asked to name the best two centres in the Welsh game.
As an aside, it was a minor surprise that Donald Trump didn’t have his say about Max Llewellyn’s Wales squad omission during his inaugural address as US president. Everyone else seems to have had their two pence worth.
The flip side for Gatland is the experience and quality of returnees to the squad such as Taulupe Faletau, Liam Williams and Josh Adams should have a positive impact. Also, other important figures, such as Jac Morgan and Tomos Williams, are in blistering form.
Morgan’s statistics for his European Challenge Cup outing against Pau a week last Saturday were something else: 30 tackles, 10 carries, 10 passes, two turnovers and a try, with five of his hits being dominant affairs. It was the kind of performance that might tempt lexicographers to redefine the word ‘omnipresent’, or at least place a picture of Morgan next to the definition.
If there was a better performance in European rugby on that particular day, we should have been told about it.
Williams, meantime, has been making headlines for Gloucester all season. At Kingsholm, The Shed laud him as much as the opposition fear him.
Can Wales rouse themselves in the French capital this weekend? To avoid embarrassment, they’ll need to.
If Wales are to confound expectations they need those two to point the way.
But the reality is Gatland’ team are still trying to fight their way out of a horrendously difficult spell. Expectations have to be modest because results have been modest, and we are talking serious understatement there. It’s reached the point when even supporters with red eyeballs and dragon tattoos will not expect silverware come mid-March, or at least they shouldn’t.
The head coach will not be looking that far ahead. For him and his staff, the entire focus this week will be on France and the trip to the City of Light, of which the travel writer Bill Bryson once said: “I love to watch cities wake up, and Paris wakes up more abruptly, more startlingly, than any place I know.” Can Wales rouse themselves in the French capital this weekend? To avoid embarrassment, they’ll need to.
