DONNCHA O’Callaghan had a great take about facing the Welsh. The former Munster, Ireland and Lions lock played against them many times and learned a lot from the experience.
The Corkman always marvelled at how fairly middling club players would transform into super-humans when they put on that red jersey. When it came to international games against Wales, these were not the Clark Kents which you saw on duty for the Ospreys or Scarlets, they brought their capes on Test duty.
Speaking on The Offload, the hugely entertaining and informative podcast he presents along with Tommy Bowe, O’Callaghan cited former Dragons No8 Michael Owen as an example of this transformative effect.
When O’Callaghan and his Munster team-mates faced down Owen on club duty, he didn’t seem like anything special. A few months later, in the Cardiff cauldron of the Principality Stadium with 74,000 locals baying for blood, Owen was a totally different proposition.
Our national team walked into these Welsh ambushes time and again.
O’Callaghan was on duty when Declan Kidney’s high-flying Ireland were due to meet Wales in the 2011 World Cup quarter-final in Wellington.
In the 2011 World Cup quarter-final, a young Wales side played Ireland off the park
We didn’t know a huge amount about this young Welsh team before that game. Ireland were duly played off the park and sent packing. The likes of Sam Warburton, Dan Lydiate, Taulupe Faletau, Jonathan Davies, George North and Leigh Halfpenny had announced themselves to the world.
What followed would be an era of unprecedented success for Wales.
When Warren Gatland arrived in 2008, the Welsh game was at the lowest ebb. They were still coming to terms with being dumped out of the World Cup by Fiji the previous year.
In the next 11 years, Gatland would take Wales to dizzying heights, guiding his team to three Grand Slams and two World Cup semi-finals. His core of trusted players would backbone the 2013 Lions triumph in Australia and plenty more of them would play a big role on the tour of New Zealand four years later.
His backroom team of Shaun Edwards, Rob Howley and Robin McBryde played their part, too.
Gatland had some generational talents, including Alun Wyn Jones, Warburton, Jonathan Davies, North and Shane Williams.
He fostered a powerful siege mentality in camp. And he made the players believe they had more in them. As O’Callaghan cited in the past, they were different specimens at Test level.
It was staggering really. In terms of resources, the Welsh game was in disarray. From grassroots to the corridors of power at Wales HQ, there were serious issues.
Wales arrive in Dublin on the back of a 14-game losing streak in the Six Nations
There were plenty of mistakes along the way. Take the long-suffering regions for example. In 2003, the Wales power brokers decided to restructure the club game. Gone were the beloved clubs, steeped in history, such as Swansea, Llanelli, Neath, Newport and Pontypridd. In their place, five regions were brought on stream. The Celtic Warriors went bust after a few years, leaving Ospreys, Scarlets, Cardiff and the Dragons to take things forward.
One of those regions — most likely the Ospreys — is set to be culled in the coming years. Suffice to say, it hasn’t had a great effect on morale across the Welsh game.
This is nothing new. The lowly positions of Welsh clubs in the URC and the Champions Cup has been a regular occurrence, for a long, long time.
Yet, Wales continued to punch above their weight throughout the Gatland era. There was always the fear that a crash was around the corner when the golden generation began to retire and Gatland sought pastures new after the 2019 World Cup.
Wayne Pivac, the Kiwi and former policeman, was a popular choice to succeed Gatland. He had recently guided a Scarlets team, which had Tadhg Beirne on board, to a brilliant Pro14 title in 2018. What’s more, they played a vibrant brand of attacking rugby. Pivac was the perfect candidate to take Wales into the new era. He even managed to land an unlikely Six Nations title success in 2021.
Then the wheels began to come off. Pivac’s three-year tenure saw Wales slip to ninth in the world rankings, having won 13 games, lost 20 and drawn one. A home defeat against Georgia in the autumn of 2022 proved to be the final straw.
Wales sent an SOS to Gatland. But any notions he could do another loaves and fishes act were quickly dispelled. Successive wooden spoons followed, with Gatland’s Second Coming proving a spectacular failure.
Cardiff head coach Matt Sherratt stepped in as interim head coach in the wake of Gatland’s departure, with a wounded Wales putting it up to Ireland last year in Cardiff, before the visitors went up a gear and sealed a 27-18 win.
The former Scotland defence coach has since come on board in a full-time capacity and he is finding the going tough in the gig. For one thing, his team are conceding, on average, six tries per game.
Wales were beaten 73-0 by the Springboks in November
Despite a much-improved performance in a losing cause to Scotland in the third round, they are widely being written off as cannon fodder ahead of their meeting with Andy Farrell’s resurgent Ireland on Friday night.
Here are some grim stats on Wales at the moment. They will will arrive in the capital on the back of a 14-game losing streak in the Six Nations.
Tandy’s troops have lost 24 of their past 26 internationals. They are on track for a third consecutive wooden spoon and have slipped down to 12th in the global rankings. They were beaten 73-0 by the Springboks in November and copped hammerings from Argentina and the All Blacks earlier that month. They lost their championship games against England and France in the opening rounds by an aggregate score of 102-19. Grim, indeed.
Tandy was clearly spread too thin. Peter Murchie, with Kobelco Kobe Steelers in Japan at present and once with Glasgow Warriors, will bring some much-needed defensive steel to the Welsh ranks when he arrives in June.
There have been some bright spots amid all the doom and gloom of this current Six Nations campaign, with backrower Aaron Wainwright, young centre Eddie James and full-back Louis Rees-Zammit putting in big shifts. Alex Mann, Rhys Carre and Dafydd Jenkins are a trio of tough forwards as well.
But another tough night is in store at the Aviva.
There was a time when these Dragons would bring the fire in this fixture. Those days feel like a long time ago now. A sad state of affairs for a once proud rugby nation.
