Injuries to blame

It is complete nonsense to link Sunday's Six Nations defeat by Ireland with all the goings-on off the field in the past fortnight.

Those who connect the loss of Mike Ruddock as coach and the mayhem that has followed with the team losing in Ireland are just looking for something that isn't there.

They're just trying to fan the flames and stir up more trouble, as if we haven't got enough on our hands as it is.

Jonathan Davies, Jeremy Guscott and Keith Wood present a formidable array of former players, but for them to claim the players wearing red at Lansdowne Road on Sunday looked unhappy and uninterested was, quite frankly, a disgrace.

It's easy to say that from the warmth of a television studio - the rest of us sat outside in freezing temperatures for two hours and more - but it shows a complete lack of empathy with what was going on.

Let me give you just one example which these ex-players and other armchair critics, like the one who wrote an uninformed front page comment yesterday while not being anywhere near Dublin, wouldn't appreciate because they weren't there.

Ian Gough was so shattered even an hour after the game finished that when he arrived at the media area to be interviewed as scheduled by the Welsh evening papers he had to complete the short session sat in a chair.

He had given his all, he was so exhausted by the effort, by the toll it took on him that he just couldn't stand up. Team-mate Martyn Williams alongside him was still red in the face with the effort of stemming the Irish tide.

Yet people who ought to know better claim the Welsh team weren't interested or were unhappy. That's an insult to those players who took the field against Ireland and it was completely wide of the mark.

And how can one entire front page comment piece fail to mention the single most obvious factor in Wales' admittedly below-par performance against Ireland - the heavy injury toll.

Just six, yes six, players were remaining from the team which won the Grand Slam the last time Wales played Ireland eleven months ago.

Hugo McNeil, the former Ireland full back and one ex-player whose view I would respect, said Ireland could not withstand the loss of so many players.

In fact, no other country in world rugby, apart from New Zealand, could offset the absence of such a vast array of talent.

At one stage the injury list rose to 15 players, and they continue to mount at an alarming rate. Skipper Gareth Thomas and ace wing Shane Williams were missing from the Ireland game, Thomas joining the ever growing list of lengthy absentees, his damaged neck artery keeping him out for the rest of the season along with Ryan Jones, Tom Shanklin, Chris Horsman, Kevin Morgan and Brent Cockbain, other squad players also out.

Even then key outside half Stephen Jones lasted just 19 minutes in Dublin before being forced off with a leg injury that could even make him a doubt for next week's game against Italy.

Into his place against Ireland stepped Gavin Henson, not an outside half and playing just his second game since his return from a seven-week ban, and only his fifth of the season, his first at that level for almost a year.

So while he did have a nightmare, making all sorts of errors, worst of all with his kicking out of hand, it was expecting far too much from him considering his lengthy absence and limited experience in the position he was asked to fill.

But over and above all that, the majority of Welsh clubs now appear hell bent on forcing an extraordinary meeting of the WRU with chief executive Steve Lewis and chairman David Pickering in their sights.

They seem to blame them for the Ruddock situation and are hell bent on causing even more mayhem.

Lewis and Pickering are about to travel around all the districts to fully explain the facts to the clubs, like, for example, Ruddock wanting to resign from his post on no fewer than three occasions and how contract talks were held up and changed to a degree where it became a renegotiation issue.

I know I wrote in this column only a week ago that Gerald Davies would be the ideal man to clear up the mess and possessed the dignity needed to be the top man.

But I'm no longer convinced that yet more blood-letting is what Welsh rugby needs. If the clubs persist in trying to tear the game apart we could even arrive at a situation around April or May where Wales has no coach, no chief executive and no chairman. No hope either?

The banks, still owed around £40m by the WRU, don't forget, despite the David Moffett-induced reforms, would undoubtedly take a renewed interest in the situation should such a doomsday scenario arrive.

So let's stop tearing ourselves apart, batten down the hatches, wait for the injured players to return and then watch for an upturn in Welsh rugby fortunes.