'Embarrassed' Gatland axes his captain

The fall-out over Wales’ 16-all draw against Fiji at the Millennium Stadium on Friday, described by coach Warren Gatland as “embarrassing”, has already claimed one victim.

Captain Ryan Jones has been axed after a game that saw Wales extend their winless streak to six games.

A penalty try awarded after just before the hour mark looked to have proved the difference and Wales looked set to claim a much-needed triumph.

But Seremaia Bai landed an injury-time penalty to clinch a draw at the death and leave Wales’ year-end campaign in tatters – after three losses and the visit of top-ranked New Zealand team this week to come.

The horrific performance contradicted Gatland’s claim that his Wales Class of 2010 has strength in depth and is better than the Grand Slam aces of two years ago.

The Welsh Dragons have not tasted victory since the 33-10 Six Nations victory over Italy in March and carried the painful memories of their 2007 World Cup exit at the hands of Fiji into the game. On that sunny day in Nantes, Wales were sucked in to playing Fiji at their own game – losing 34-38.

“It is pretty disappointing,” Gatland said in his post-match media briefing.

“We feel a bit embarrassed by the performance.

“It would have been nice to send the kids and families here away with a win and we were not good enough to do it.”

Then came the Jones jolter, after the captain’s inexplicable error gifted Fiji the injury-time penalty.

“I told the players in the dressing room afterwards that [hooker] Matthew [Rees] will be captain next week,” said Gatland, who has previously been a staunch backer of Jones.

There is no doubt this result represents a crisis for Welsh rugby, a result which is up there with the World Cup defeat to Fiji, Canada at home in the 1990s and Romania in Cardiff in 1988 as one of their worst in history.

“As coach I’m always under pressure,” Gatland said after the game, adding: “But I prepare a team as well as I can… I can’t go out there and play the game for them.

“It’s up to the players, but you have to take the good with the bad. And this was bad.

“We have to take it on the chin and look forward to New Zealand.”

The departing skipper, Jones, hung his head in shame.

“I’ve just had the worst 20 minutes of my rugby career, facing up to all the boys and apologising for a mistake that I have made, giving three points away that resulted in a draw,” Jones said.

“I’ve got to live with that.”

Gatland also bemoaned the high error count.

“We were let down by our accuracy, turnovers, penalties, our line-out didn’t function and we probably kicked the ball when we should have kept it and kept it when we should’ve kicked it,” the coach said.

“It was a game we should have won had we keep our patience and composure. After 50-60 minutes every time the clock stopped a string of Fijians would go down.

“The disappointing thing is we made a number of changes wanting to see what depth we had and perhaps it’s not as deep as we thought.

“We felt we really stepped up in the first couple of weeks and improved but it wasn’t there tonight. We weren’t strong enough at the break down and there weren’t enough turnovers.

“There’s certainly some areas we can work on for next week.”

In the build-up to the clash all the talk in the Welsh camp was about the importance of securing a triumph and playing intelligent rugby.

But all that went out of the window in a loose and error-strewn encounter as Wales fell into the same trap.

The introduction of four second half replacements for Wales appeared to turn the game and secure a win after Fiji had first surged into a 13-6 half-time lead thanks to Albert Vulivuli.

But Bai’s injury-time penalty broke Welsh hearts as Fiji shared the spoils in Cardiff.

Gatland also acknowledged his side need to improve on how they handle the game’s perceived lesser lights when changes are made to the starting XV.

“Canada was like that, Samoa was like that,” he said.

“Games where we have made changes, we have struggled and that is something we need to come to terms with. That was the emphasis on this game. The best teams in the world are ruthless and put these teams away, but the amount of mistakes we made proved to be a costly factor.”