Favorites Tag an Honour Not an Albatross For Gatland's Wales

Wales are the favorites for the Six Nations championships. Its there, plain for all to see on betting websites, in the press, and even coming from the players and coaching staff themselves. We are the favorites. 

I have tried hard to deflect the weight of expectation away from the team, but its just not shifting.

It is of course understandable that Warren Gatland’s team, a talented yet shambolic ensemble, plagued infighting, player power, and severe technical deficiencies just twelve months ago, are the team that the majority of pundits are looking at to set the tone for the tournament.

Last season’s Grand Slam, coupled with the autumn victory over Australia, sets them apart from the other northern hemisphere teams in terms of recent success. And the steady progress of the Cardiff Blues and Ospreys in the Heineken Cup has done nothing to ease the sense of anticipation surrounding the team.

There is a widely held belief that, unlike in 2006 when an injury depleted squad, soon to be exposed for the nest of backstabbing and disharmony that it was, embarked on the doomed mission to defend the 2005 Slam, Gatland’s new model Wales are still moving forward.

Inside the Principality itself there are mixed emotions, generally swaying violently between a sense of unbridled optimism, apprehension and bewilderment, particularly amongst my own younger generation.

For us, the very idea of Wales entering a tournament under the tag of favorites seems perverse.

Growing up in the 90’s and early 21^st century, the glory days of the 70’s were considered just that; an unrepeatable, fairytale period when the Welsh "sidestep wizards,"ruled the world (or the Northern part of it at least.)  

The 80’s and 90’s were grim and the leap into professionalism had only seemed to widen the gulf between the Celtic nations and the giants of England and France.

England’s dominance in particular, built upon organised, powerful, forward orientated rugby (everything the Welsh stood against), created a particular feeling of injustice amongst the fans for whom scalps against the old enemy became as precious as they were rare.

We accepted that those rare moments of success, such as Graham Henry’s brief salvo as "the Great Redeemer," and the magic of 2005, would be our lot and got on with things. The game’s popularity never diminished but ambitions were severely curbed.

It may well of course turn out to be that 2008 sits alongside those moments as brief flashes of Welsh brilliance and, by 2011, we will once again be scrapping it out with Fiji for a token quarter final appearance.

This current crop however, seems different.

Much of the talk from the English press seems to create the impression that the title of favorites sits unhappily on the shoulders of the Welsh and that the emotion driven Celtic mentality is no match for the stoicism of the Anglo-Saxons.

It is not however, a theory I buy into. The body language emanating from the camp is relaxed and positive and Captain Ryan Jones was in jovial mood at the official launch of the tournament laughing off the failures of the 2006 campaign.

Indeed, the presence in the team of so many who were involved in that dramatic unravelling of morale will surely be able to learn from the mistakes made then.

Gatland, unlike his predecessor in 2006, Mike Ruddock, appears to be in total command of the team and such is the presence of his bullish, cocksure deputy Shaun Edwards in the camp that any form of dissent seems not only futile but an invitation for physical torture.

All this is not to say Wales are nailed on for another Grand Slam. History shows us how difficult a back-to-back, clean sweep can be and trips to Paris and even Murrayfield on the opening day provide at least two potential banana skins.

But as Gatland stated recently, "being favorites is something Wales teams of the future should expect," if they are to continue to develop into a team capable of consistently challenging and beating the world’s best. And so, despite the desolate years of my youth, tentatively, with just a slither of foreboding, I’m beginning to believe him.