Gatland excited by New Zealand challenge

Wales haven’t toured New Zealand since 2010 and haven’t won in seven attempts against the All Blacks on their home soil. They have never before played three tests against them and will, of course, be tackling the reigning World Cup holders.
 
“We’re pretty excited about the summer and going on tour to New Zealand. With the team we’ve got, and providing we don’t pick up too many injuries, we’ve got some players we know are X-Factor and can hopefully go out there and perform for us,” admitted Gatland.
 
One of those X-Factor players is certainly George North, who has proved during the 2016 6 Nations campaign that he is getting back to his very best after overcoming his concussion problems. He ended the championship as the leading try scorer with four and was named the RBS Man of the Match against Italy.
 
“George North has been one of the top scorers. It’s all about building up George and giving him some confidence,” said Gatland.
 
“As players and a team, we don’t always perform to our optimum. But you have no idea what it means to these players when they get built up, people believe in them and you get behind them – it has a massive influence.
 
“George has come into this campaign and started to play with a smile on his face and with some real confidence. He is probably getting back to where he was in 2013 and I think he’s in a really good place at the moment.”
 
Gatland’s team re-wrote the Welsh record books as they put the Italians to the sword as they scored championship and 6 Nations highs of nine tries, 67 points and secured a 53 point winning margin.
 
“It’s been a funny campaign. I understand Wales, and there’s a massive expectation, and we have been criticised in the past for the way we have played, even though it has been pretty successful,” said Gatland.
 
“We spoke about trying to change up our game at the start of this competition, but it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a little bit of time when you are trying to change things.
 
“We’ve mixed things up with some of the forwards in wider channels and there have been times when we have really have clicked, like today, the last part of the second half against England and parts of other games.
 
“We have started to show something and it looks like that’s a game we can develop. We had a few moments today where we had a couple of passes that didn’t go to hand, were forced or were a little bit behind.
 
“We have got to continue to work on that and get better at it. But I thought we showed some nice improvement and some nice development and played with some confidence. Hopefully, we can build on that and look forward to playing England before we go on tour to New Zealand.
 
“We’ve been criticised for playing the same-way and playing the touchlines. If you are observant, we haven’t been playing that way as much – we have played other players in wider channels and we have played some different patterns.
 
“Yet we still get criticised as being the same-old, same-old. We’re not a club side, where you’ve got three months together in pre-season and then warm-up games and you can spend 10 or 12 games of the season working on it.
 
“We’re an international team and the expectations are that we have a week or two together and it should be perfect. It’s just taking us a little bit of time. We showed a little bit of progression towards the end of last weekend and there were some nice touches today.”
 
The inspiration for the big win over Italy came from the defeat against England the previous weekend. Everyone in the Welsh camp was left scratching their heads as to why the team had performed so poorly for the first hour, before hitting back with three tries to close the gap to a mere four points.
 
That was the only defeat suffered by Wales during the championship, although they did draw the opening fixture against Ireland. Seven wins and one draw in the past 10 championship matches is not a bad return.
 
“As coaches and players, we were all disappointed with the first-half of last week. We had an in-house meeting about what we could have done differently to make the first-half better and the players were incredibly honest,” revealed Gatland.
 
“They spoke about how important it was to go out and deliver a performance and start well this week. In fairness to them, they did that – they stood up. I am just hugely impressed with the way they responded to the disappointment of last week in terms of taking that responsibility.
 
“There is no doubt that the first 60 minutes against England were poor. We put our hands up as players and coaches and took full responsibility for that – it wasn’t a good enough performance.
 
“I’m not sure about the game against Ireland in Dublin. I think you have to take your hats off to Ireland, they came out of the blocks flying and all of a sudden we were 13-0 down.
 
“Sometimes that happens in rugby, but we worked our way back into the game and got ourselves in front. I’m not sure it was us playing poorly in the first-half, it was more a reflection that Ireland really came out and played well in that first period.
 
“But there’s no doubt we didn’t perform to what we expect of ourselves at Twickenham. The players responded after half-time and they certainly responded against Italy.”