It's funny how some people get so triggered that others people had some praise and success, they get quite fixated on it.

I was wondering when you were going to ride into town to stick up for Gatland. Worlds best coach and all has suffered 6 losses this season. Two at home in the regular season and 4 consecutive losses in the NZ Super Rugby comp. If he is as good as you've always maintained why have they become a disorganized rabble under his brief tenure?

Funny how you label him that. No Welsh fan for exampe has ever done that in any serious way. Unless you missed the tongue in cheek. I mean The Irish always moaned about him, as did the Scots. The Welsh where the first to complain about the limitations of Gatlandball on this forum for years. Long before everyone else started to when he mostly stopped playing Gatlandball, ironically.

However at the end of his Welsh tenure Gatland did get a tn of praise for all his had acomplished for Wales, and he did a lot, taking the game here and developing it to professional era class at all levels. Why woudln't Welsh fans praise him highly for their most successful period since the 1970's as he was leaving the role after a long tenue in it? For some reason this seems to have jilted some people o the board.

What Gatland has been most credited for is having an history of doing an incredible jobs against the odds with low resource teams and leading teams like Wasps and Wales into their most successful periods of the modern era. Likewise he has no fear for needing a long time to change the culture or nature of a team so the players take more resonsibility within the organisaion. He is happy to experiment along the way.

I'd also say another long criticism of him is his teams are slow starting and getting better, Wales success often hinged if they ground out a good start and then played better and better. A stopped seaosn would always work against him.

Also rugby is a funny game, virtually all the great coaches have been to a team and had bad results/acomplished nothing in some way. Hansen at Wales had the longest losing streak, Henry's gold truned to crap for no reason there as well, Eddie Jones Reds and late Oz career was terrible, Erasmus' Munster got humiliated in a final by the Scarlets and his Stormers once came 10/14th in Super Rugby, Clive Woodward had the tour from hell before winning the world cup, Joe Schmidt went from Genius in 2018 to past it with no new ideas in 2019, Robbie Deans was taken off Oz coach after going nowhere while being the most successful Super Rugby coach of all time.

Gatand himself had plenty of seasons at Wales that were infuriatingly bad, his long duct against SH sides was one of them. None of those listed are bad coaches. Rugby is a sport where all the good coaching can just go to shite anytime when things just don't click on occasion. And one bad half season doesn't change anything, they've all had them.

Well I've never wanted him anywhere near the All Black head coaches role but to be fair at the beginning of the year I would have taken him over the other Waikato twat who has landed the job Ian Foster. But given his dismal record this year it's a wash.

To be fair Gatland himself said he'd need to be in New Zealand learning the ropes and how the All Blacks systems work before he could take the job on. He's probably seeing Super Rugby as a chance to adapt his coaching. Gatland how no worries experimenting with Wales, it's possible he'll do the same with the Chiefs.

Despite his reputation for Warrenball/Gatlandball he has never confirmed himself to one style of play, except the use of the rush defence. His Wasps side looked nothing like his other sides, his Welsh style in the first few seasons was little like his Warrenball years which in turn was differenct to his more all round style later on.

Best offload the chancer now. He won’t amount to anything. Spoofer extraordinaire.

Send him home

I think it's stupid to write off Gatland's coaching ability after just four matches of Super Rugby Aotearoa given his impressive body of work over many years. He is clearly a good coach, his team is just struggling a bit right now. Rob Penney won four provincial titles in a row with Canterbury, but is struggling with the Waratahs. Has Penney suddenly become a poor coach? Of course he hasn't, and neither has Gatland.

He has ruined their style of play.
As a neutral when the chiefs don't play the blues- I usually loved watching them play. Now they are playing some shit northern hemisphere style game and usually that also means losing style on top of being boring and it sux.

Its more that its boring. Also that teams that usually go for the tires end up winning. Drop goals are rarely effective. its always better to go for the try.

Gatland already has his PR officer EDF fluffing him on this thread, he doesn't need Penney's PR officer fluffing him as well.

OUT of his misery, please someone dear god

Pure mental frailty. His team wasn’t great either.

Gatland out.

Starting to think the chiefs are just a shit team.

People writing him off have some sort of agenda. He has a long record as a successful coach.

Who gives a fudge about his past deeds? He's 0-5 in Super Rugby Aotearoa. Clearly not up to coaching at this level.

While it is no guarantee of future success a long record of success in previous coaching jobs does normally give a new coach an extended period of good will to turn things around if they make a bad start. Many of us seem to dislike Gatland but only the fools think his poor start is proof he is not up to it.

I fear that Warren Gatland has become the José Mourinho of rugby.

A lot of NZers seem likely to never forgive Gatland over the lions tour.

After literally a handful of games that seems like wishful thinking.

It goes back much further than that. In the mid 2000's he came back to NZ expecting the red carpet to be rolled out for a Super Rugby coaching role. When it wasn't forthcoming he headed back North to coach Wales and took great delight in constantly telling anyone who would listen "We're not as good as we think we are in NZ" which had a certain ring to it given our successive world cup failures. Just a negative, whiny, smug plum and his teams typically play dour, negative, one dimensional rugby.

Hopefully his miserable run with the Chiefs will put to bed any notion that he is a future All Black coach.

Some don’t like honesty.

And some expect miracles.

You can’t polish a turd. It’ll take time. Unfortunate that wendyball impatience and unrealistic expectations have permeated the psyche of some.

Rumour is Gatland had pisstapes from a refs conference in Swansea. Cameras set up all over the place.

Bollocks! The Chiefs have been an excellent team for years and I thought the arrival of Gatland would make them even better and they would be a top team, challenging the Crusaders as the top NZ side. The first few results were promising (in the regular season) but there were a couple of meek home losses against lesser sides that raised eyebrows. Now in Super Rugby Aotearoa they have been unlucky in some matches but there is no hiding from the dismal 0-5 record. He has a good record overall and fair play to him but talk of him being the AB coach in waiting due to his long record of success seemed ridiculous. I'm hoping his dismal performance at this level will put that notion to bed permanently.

Yes, madness.

He seemed to do okay at polishing the dross that is Wales. Well against some teams but not all

He'd actually be a great AB coach. Any short punchy competition where he can brow beat the officials and opposition players is his natural space. A long drawn out league would bore him.

Nah we blame Poite

Winning three Premiership on the bounce will do that to a man.

But maybe there’s hope and a lesson there for the casual and transient Kiwi fan. When joined Wasps, they were bottom of the league. He squeezed success out of them. He even made Ireland competitive. Hopefully the Chiefs have the talent to do likewise.

I wonder if the Chiefs require a coach with mana, one who can tap into the region's rich indigenous culture.

Or, in other words, someone who isn't a honky.

And I’m out.

Is his plan to drive them down so that he can bring them back up? It’s a bold play.

I have an agenda, that agenda is that I like the Chiefs to actually win matches.

Gatland OUT.

Wasps were a team in complete disarray at the time he took over, at least from a coaching / management perspective. He did fantastically well to sort things out.
Chiefs were arguably the best NZ team playerwise in this year's competition and he has got nothing out of them.

Yes, ridiculous anyone dare consider a coach with a long history of success be considered for a big job

Tbf to the Gatland haters, his 0% record in Super RUgby Aotearoa isn't anything to boast about. Yes his squad has a gaping hole in with Retallick unavailable until 2023 due to his sabbatical, but he has a better squad than his results would suggest. The Crusaders would kill for his loose forward options.

Adam Thompson? Jesse Parete? I doubt it.

Surprised, as were the commentators when he subbed his 8, Sowakula, who was having a great game, with plenty of time on the clock.

Premiership rugby is corrupt and everybody knows that. It's been in the news. NZ on the other hand are the moral and spiritual guardians of the game. He forgot his unique brand of carrot and stick wouldn't work on the men from the long white cloud

What a shame that henry considered my educational discourse too confronting.

His record with Wales against SH sides was very poor and with the Lions he had a Beale slip to thank for a series win against what was a mediocre Aussie side and some suspect ref calls saved his Lions in NZ, a tour which saw one of the strongest Lions squads ever assembled lose to the Blues & Highlanders and were fortunate to draw with the Hurricanes.

He was a 'momentum' coach in the 6n, beat Eng, Ire or France in their first game and they could ride the wave to the title but if they didn't get off to a good start they would fight it out with Scotland and Italy at the bottom. His record away from the cauldron that is Cardiff against both NH and SH opposition was not good.