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“Wales,” he said, simply. Not many in the room agreed.
On the eve of the opener against a resurgent Scotland in Cardiff, Gatland told WRU chief executive Roger Lewis his men would win “by 20 points”. Lewis’s response is not known but surely an eyebrow would have been raised to such confidence against the prevailing mood.
In the event, Gatland short-changed his men. But he knew something those outside his squad did not. They made the absence of eight Lions an irrelevance by splicing all the confidence and verve which had carried the Scarlets into the Champions Cup quarter-finals – and 10 of them started here – to the ferocious defensive upgrade installed by Shaun Edwards and the alchemy exposed Scotland’s new-found confidence as a mirage.
John Barclay, Scotland captain and a Scarlet too, must have known many of the tricks in Gatland’s book but instead trudged off the field feeling like he had spent the afternoon in a hall of mirrors. “It feels pretty raw,” he said.
Gatland knew he was onto something when Grant Fox, the New Zealand great, revealed to him the All Blacks felt they had to play their absolute best to beat Wales last November.
“I came away from that conversation feeling that we were not as far away as people thought we were,” he said.
“People had written us off, but I knew we were in a good place and knew we had been training well.”
People had written us off, but I knew we were in a good place and knew we had been training well
The Scarlets’ success injected further confidence into both coach and players. And after a fortnight in camp, they took to the field and executed the perfect gameplan with dead-eyed intensity.
The Welsh defence was turbocharged, cutting the supply lines to the much-vaunted Scottish back three. Poor Ali Price, the scum-half, was so dazzled in their headlights he threw the pass that his opposite number Gareth Davies intercepted for the opening try.
Shell-shocked, he skewed his feed into a defensive scrum two minutes later and from the free-kick, Wales went left and then right in a series of precise drives that put Leigh Halfpenny over for his first try in five years.
Halfpenny’s second, created by a deft Steff Evans flick in the 62nd minute, ended the contest – such as it was. And Evans saved the best for last, a flying dive after Hadleigh Parkes’ offload set him free down the left wing. Peter Horne’s injury-time try was no consolation at all for the drained Scots.
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“We knew what Scotland were going to come with and they did that for the first 20 minutes but defensively we were absolutely outstanding,” said Ken Owens, the hooker. “We got an intercept try from the pressure we put them under and another good try from a scrum platform.
“Then our attacking game came right to the fore in the second half and we came away with four tries. We have been criticised for not scoring – we delivered on that.”
Owens expects this to be only the first of many messages Wales send out this championship.
“First game up, we are pretty happy,” he said. “You are going to get used to the intensity of Test match rugby on the second weekend. We have always been slow starters so it is not a bad start for us, is it?”
