It started poorly and ended worse.

Most fans of the Wales men’s rugby team will want to put their memories of this year’s Six Nations campaign into a lead box and drop it to the very bottom of the Mariana Trench, but, as the saying goes, you should never waste a crisis.

Wales have now lost 17 international matches in row, dating back to October 2023. Only the respite of non-test wins against the Barbarians and Queensland Reds have provided any relief in the last 18 months.

With back-to-back Wooden Spoons in the Six Nations for the first time in their history and now on the lookout for a new coach, the answers to ‘where did it all go wrong?’ are myriad and complex.

Wales started the Six Nations with Warren Gatland in charge, they ended it with Matt Sherratt bidding farewell.

Gatland started the tournament with Ben Thomas at flyhalf, Sherratt ended it with the previously overlooked Gareth Anscombe at 10.

They started the campaign with a back three of Josh Adams, Liam Williams, and Tom Rogers, they ended with Ellis Mee, Joe Roberts, and Blair Murray.

Wales will hope that a new coach, with new ideas, will freshen up the camp that has been through the ringer in recent times.

The Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) often brief of a long-term plan, a new deal with the regions, and a strategy to lift Wales out of their malaise.

If Gatland’s ‘exit’ interviews are to be believed, then the ‘One Wales’ plan announced in June 2024 is far away.

That plan is essentially a wish list of where they want to be by 2029: both the men’s and women’s sides ‘consistently in the top 5 teams in the world’, regional sides challenging in the play-offs of the URC and Celtic Challenge, financial stability at all levels, and grow the active number of rugby players.

Right now, these ambitions seem, well, ambitious to say the least.

For the short term, Wales are playing into the hands of their opponents and not providing enough of a contest in tight international matches.

Bookending the competition against France and England, Wales were blown away by both sides’ physicality, falling to a record away defeat in the former and record home defeat in the latter.

In between, the Italy match was perhaps the most dispiriting. Against an Italian side that had barely impressed throughout the tournament, Wales were bereft of ideas.

That result spelt the end of Gatland. It can reasonably be claimed that the New Zealander is Wales’s greatest and worst ever coach.

His first spell, from 2008 to 2019, was spectacular.

Three Grand Slams in 2008, 2012 and 2019 were the pinnacles as a generation of Welsh talent was moulded by Gatland, Rob Howley, Shaun Edwards, et al.

Wales were a side no one wanted to play. They reached two World Cup semi-finals, in 2011 and 2019, with hearts broken in the tightest of matches against France and South Africa respectively.

He was also the best coach the British and Irish Lions had in a generation, leading a stunning series victory in Australia before a rare draw in New Zealand.

Since his return in 2022, however, Wales have been the team everyone wants to play.

Outside of a solid, if unspectacular 2023 World Cup campaign, Gatland coached Wales to just two victories in 21 matches.

Matt Sherratt came in ahead of the Ireland match and brought much needed positivity.

That game, Wales’s first at home in the competition, showed that the playing group has the quality to compete, they just need some new voices and a renewed confidence.

Despite that, they lost 18-27, with Ireland proving that winning is a habit, pulling away in the last 20 minutes.

The Scotland result was a strange one. You feel a team better than Scotland, say France or England, would not have let Wales back into the match after such a chaotic, and ultimately fatal, first half.

Sherratt, parachuted in from his good work at Cardiff Rugby, brought an outside perspective on the team and, at least against Ireland and Scotland, a small measure of positivity.

Speaking ahead of his last match in charge against England, Sherratt spoke well of the position a lot of these talented young Welsh players are in.

“I remember watching the games as a supporter before I came in,” Sherratt said.

“As a coach and ex-teacher, I looked at Dewi [Lake], Jac [Morgan], and Dafydd [Jenkins] and was hoping that they weren’t taking it home with them.

“They should love playing for Wales. What I’ve tried to do is let some of the senior boys talk and let them go out and play without the burden.”

So beyond placing the last year and a half of results into a file and stamping it with a big ‘Official Secrets Act’ logo, what can Wales do to, you know, actually win a match?

Outside of the issues with funding, the club and regional game, the toxic culture of the WRU, what the Wales men’s senior national team need is a break.

Not only a break from the Gatland regime that ended after their nadir in Rome in the second round, but these players need to forget about Wales for a bit and play some enjoyable, winning rugby.

Now that is easier said than done. Despite all three of Cardiff, Ospreys, and Scarlets in the mix for the United Rugby Championship play-offs – as well as having the potential to go deep in the EPCR Challenge Cup – they are all up against deeper and better funded squads in both competitions.

That is even before you get to the likes of Dragons’ Elliot Dee and Aaron Wainwright, both excellent pros that acquitted themselves well for Wales this spring, who have won one match between them for club and country.

Whoever comes in as the new head coach, Franco Smith, Michael Cheika, or Simon Easterby, they can look to the summer for a new era of Welsh rugby.

With only a handful of Welsh players set to tour with the British and Irish Lions to Australia, the new coach will have an almost full squad with which to prepare for the next few years.

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Sportin Wales’s coverage of Wales’s World Cup qualifying campaign is proudly sponsored by S4C. You can watch all of Wales’s matches this year for free on S4C and S4C Clic.

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