A team once renowned for flakiness and unreliability now take some beating but the Wales coach will leave after the World Cup with praise rather than fanfare or gratitude
Warren Gatland will on Saturday reach 100 Test matches as Wales’s coach. He will get to the landmark 20 years to the day since he took over from Brian Ashton in charge of Ireland: his sacking three years later, in circumstances that read like something from a spy novel, remains the low point in his career, a blot all his success since has not entirely erased.
As the amateur era drifted to its end, the winner of the match between Ireland and Wales tended to avoid the wooden spoon. Between 1986 and 1995 there was only one year when one of them (1994, when Scotland broke the monopoly) was not last or joint bottom. The last time one of them finished below the rest was Wales in 2003 and for most of this decade they have finished in the top half of the table.
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