Sam Warburton may yet be Warren Gatland’s choice to lead the Lions. But Peter Jackson reckons Gatland was looking for others to blame when it comes to the reasons for the end of Warburton’s time as Wales captain.

 

Warren Gatland found the oldest scapegoat under the sun for Sam Warburton losing the Wales captaincy before their worst Six Nations campaign for a decade.  The Lions’ head coach blames the Press.

There is, as readers of this column are aware, a case for the blame to be pinned on Gatland’s very own Welsh management team in general and Rob Howley, in particular. They created the confusion that led to the end of Warburton’s impressive leadership reign.

Unwittingly or not, they undermined his captaincy to the stage where he took the hint and decided he would be better off without the armband. There was not a word of that, of course, when Gatland addressed the subject on national radio last weekend.

“You’ve got to feel for Sam a little bit,’’ he told Garry Richardson’s BBC Radio Sportsweek programme. “There’s so much scrutiny in Wales.  It’s the ultimate fishbowl where people are looking at every situation.

“There are other countries in the world, whether it’s New Zealand or somewhere like Ireland, where they celebrate having two quality No. 7’s. Wales have that and rather than saying ‘how lucky we are’, they create a controversy about (Justin) Tipuric and Warburton and who will be selected.

“They put the players under a lot of pressure. I think there’s a certain amount (sic) that he’d (Warburton) had enough.  Give up the captaincy, just play and not be scrutinised every week by the local press.’’

The facts of the matter are as follows:

September 23, 2016: Howley announces that Warburton ‘will continue to captain Wales for the autumn series’.

November 5, 2016: Autumn series begins.   Warburton has recovered from cheekbone damage but is omitted from the squad against Australia.   Justin Tipuric takes his place.

November 12: Warburton starts against Argentina but Gethin Jenkins continues as captain.    When he is subbed, the armband passes not to the supposed captain but to Alun-Wyn Jones, pushing Warburton further down the pecking order.

November 19: Wales restore Warburton to the No. 7 jersey and the captaincy against Japan in place of the rested Tipuric.

November 26: Wales beat an apologetic Springbok team under the Jenkins-Jones command.   Warburton had been declared unfit.

In January, the Blues flanker makes it clear that he wishes to stand down from the captaincy.   By then Wales had made it almost as clear, in spite of Howley’s statement of late September, that his time had run its course.

Gatland talked of ‘so much scrutiny in Wales’.  There are those who will say there hasn’t been enough, especially under the previous chief executive, Roger Lewis.

The ‘ultimate fishbowl?’ There were no complaints about that when Wales were being praised to the skies, properly so, for two Grand Slams and then for retaining their title by thrashing England as they did under Howley in 2013.

‘People are looking at every situation?’ Fans do that as a matter of course, whatever their team or sport. They have every reason to make themselves heard via newspapers, radio and television.  ‘Looking at every situation’ is every individual’s inalienable right, especially if he or she belongs to the public paying £100 for a ticket.

Then there is the implication that Wales does not ‘celebrate’ having two world-class openside wing forwards. That does a disservice to those whose job is to inform the fans as to what’s going on.  Warburton and Tipuric have been rightly lauded for their excellence on and off the field. Again, no mention of that from Gatland.

Creating a controversy? Tipuric’s outstanding form and Warburton’s disrupted start to the season left Howley with a dilemma eased by Taulupe Faletau’s injury.   That allowed him to pick both which probably meant more of a reprieve for Warburton than Tipuric.

Gatland, it seems, objected to the speculation.   And that from a man never slow to play the media for all its worth when lobbing verbal ‘grenades’ at opposition targets like England captain Dylan Hartley, thereby creating controversies of his own because it suited him.

Then there’s the guff about the media putting players ‘under a lot of pressure’.  In that respect, the figurative boot up the backside as applied in Wales tends to be relatively tame compared to the opprobrium hurled at the Wallabies in Australia or the England football team by what used to be Fleet Street.

Isn’t that what international sport is all about – coping with public expectation and the challenge of the occasion?  Wales, as they are fond of saying, demand high standards and that in itself creates an environment more pressurised than any other.

And if a fortnight’s public criticism of the team results ended in a high-intensity home win over Ireland, then the vast majority of fans would be of one accord: ‘Let’s have more criticism.’

The claim that the Press drove Warburton into relinquishing the captaincy is not true.

And we’re talking here, are we not, about the captain  of the Lions?

Peter Jackson’s column appears courtesy of The Rugby Paper.