RUGBY UNION: Speculation over Evans gains credence

RUGBY UNION

BY STEVE BALE

Cardiff, the Heineken League leaders, yesterday reappointed their Australian coaching director, Alex Evans, for a fourth and final season, but instead of ending speculation linking him to the Wales team the club only fuelled it.

Evans, who was the Wallabies' assistant coach when Alan Jones was in charge in the Eighties, is already involved with the Welsh Rugby Union through its lite squad of promising young players. With Alan Davies and the rest of the Welsh management likely to be on their way out next week after Wales's Five Nations whitewash, the respected Queenslander's has been the name most often mentioned. "It would be unethical and improper to talk about this," he said yesterday.

The complication such an appointment would cause makes it more probable that the WRU would use Evans in an advisory capacity in conjunction with the other widely touted option of promoting the Wales A coaches, Kevin Bowring and Dennis John.

This alternative remained open yesterday when Gareth Davies, the Cardiff chief executive, said: "It would be wrong to comment or speculate on what the WRU might want. If they should want Alex, it would present Cardiff with problems, but I wouldn't see those as insurmountable."

If the union really did desire Evans as coach, it would first have to pay off his club contract, but even then, although that would restore his amateur status, there would be the problem of making good the income he would thereby lose.

Evans himself preferred to avoid a touchy subject yesterday, instead issuing a clarion call for the unity so notably absent in Welsh rugby. "What we want in Wales is for everyone, the whole nation, to get behind the national squad. At the moment they are on an unbelievable low."

n Bath will be without nearly half their regular side for Saturday's vital Courage League match at Wasps. Their England players Victor Ubogu and Jeremy Guscott are away on business, the wing Adedayo Adebayo is in England's Hong Kong Sevens squad and the flanker Jon Hall is resting. The Scotland prop Dave Hilton and the wing Tony Swift are on the injured list.