Goodbye Graham We'll Miss You (Welsh National Rugby Union Team)

Member Name: Bridgend boy

Product:	Welsh National Rugby Union Team
Date:	08/02/02 (49 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It might shake up Welsh Rugby

Disadvantages: The WRU is still in charge

So he's gone. The Great Redeemer has fallen from grace. Are we happy. Well I'm certainly not. Have we learnt nothing from history. Henry is just the latest in the long line of great welsh hopes to be shown the door by his incompetent, cowardly employers.

The last coach not to resign or be sacked was John Dawes and he left in 1979. Even though Les Williams, the vice chairman of the WRU, Henry's employers, in a shocking display of bad management, publically stated earlier this week that Henry hadn't proved himself as a coach, if he cared to look at his facts he would realise that Henry has the best record of any Welsh coach since Tony Grey who was also sacked in 1988.

So how Mr. Williams does that suggest he hasn't proved himself?? Perhaps Mr. Williams and his insulated collegues on the WRU ought to apply the same rules to themselves and ask each other if they've proved themselves as good managers of our national game. There would only be one route open to them, and that would be resignation.

I for one am sick to death of one coach after another being made a scapegoat for the failings of the national structure and the ineptitude of the games administrators. Henry like his predeccessor Keven Bowring, constantly stated that the structure must change if the national teams performance was to improve. Like his predeccessor before him, he was ignored.

Graham Henry was not a bad coach. The materials he had to work with were bad. Under him we beat France three times, twice in Paris, a feat Wales have not achieved since 1975. We beat England, now arguably the best team in the world. We beat the then World Champions South Africa for the first time in our history. We became the first northern hemisphere team to win a test series in Argentina. Does this strike you as the symptoms of bad coaching?

Graham Henry has supplied my with my best Welsh rugby memories. I am not old enough to remember Edwards, John, B
ennett and Gerald Davies, but I do remember Gibbs dancing past the english on his way to that try, Craig Quinell charging for French line in Paris with acres of space in front of him, Wyatt stretching for the line in Agentina, Mark Taylor splitting the South African defence to score the first ever try in the Millennium Stadium. These will be Henrys legacy. What will be the WRUs?

So I'd like to take this opportunity to say goodbye to Graham Henry and thank you for a wonderful three and a half years. You took us on a great adventure. It was a blast.

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