Warren Gatland blames Margaret Thatcher and teachers’ strikes for Welsh rugby’s decline

Gatland’s second stint in charge of Wales came to an end last week

Warren Gatland has apportioned some of the blame for the decline of Welsh rugby on Margaret Thatcher after claiming that the teacher strikes in the 1980s helped “kill off” the sport in schools.

Gatland’s second stint in charge of Wales came to an end by mutual consent last week after presiding over a record losing run of 14 consecutive matches.

The New Zealander’s first spell was rather more successful, with the coach taking Wales to three Six Nations grand slams and two World Cup semi-finals between 2008 and 2019.

But even that success pales in comparison to the dominance the nation enjoyed in the 1970s when a side including greats like Gareth Edwards, Phil Bennett and JPR Williams romped regularly to Five Nations titles.

A period of political instability followed under Conservative prime minister Thatcher, with teachers among those to take strike action over pay.

And Gatland believes that it caused rugby to become a club game in Wales, giving those entities outsized power within the union which is still causing problems now.

“If you look back at the Eighties and the teachers’ strike under Thatcher, that sort of killed off a lot of the schools rugby in Wales, which was particularly strong at that time,” Gatland explained to The Telegraph. “And then the clubs picked up the slack and they don’t want to relinquish what they’ve done over a number of years, and I can understand that.

“Roger Lewis [the former WRU chief executive] asked me when I first went to Wales, ‘What would you do?’ And I said I would put investment into the schoolboy programme or the schools programme.

“If you look at probably the three top teams in the world at the moment in New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland, and the strength of their schoolboy rugby. Maybe initially £1m a year to get ten or 12 top schools up and running with investment into their facilities, even helping with the appointment of directors of rugby at the schools. I think I said we probably wouldn’t see the benefit of that for ten or 15 years, but that ten or 15 years is up by now.

“And I can imagine that if it had been ten to 15 of the colleges or the traditional rugby schools in Wales, I think we would have had the benefit. And, ironically, Roger does agree with me that it’s something we probably missed out on. We should have put that investment into the schools and then to the colleges. It’s not too late.

“We see that a lot of teams in Wales that, up to under 16, compete with any side in England. But there’s a massive difference between what happens from 16 to 18 when they go into the private school system, when they start getting proper, proper coaching at the highest level and proper weight training. At tournaments, you see [English schools] coming along and tapping up Welsh talent. It’s a massive challenge.”

Interim coach Matt Sherratt has replaced Gatland for the rest of the Six Nations. He takes charge of Wales for the first time against tournament favourites Ireland in Cardiff on Saturday afternoon.