The WRU announced on Monday that Steve Tandy would be the main to take them forwardSteve Tandy is the new Wales head coach(Image: © Huw Evans Picture Agency)

On Monday, roughly 10,000 miles separated Welsh Rugby Union chief executive Abi Tierney and director of rugby and elite performance Dave Reddin.

Two points of a triangle – one in the southern part of Brisbane’s CBD, the other in Cardiff’s Principality Stadium – speaking almost simultaneously about the new Wales head coach. Rarely, if ever, has a Wales coaching announcement spanned time zones in such a manner.

The third point of this new triangle, Steve Tandy, is enjoying some well-deserved downtime after his final summer tour with Scotland. He’ll arrive in Wales next month, ready to start work in, as his new boss Tierney describes it, his “destiny job”.

As triangles go, it was – by Welsh rugby standards at least – a well-connected one in terms of external interference. Or rather, the lack of it. Even, as things currently stand, with the points of the triangle spread all over the globe, news of Tandy’s appointment never became overwhelmingly apparent until it was made official.

Sure, it was known he was the front-runner – as first reported by WalesOnline back in April – in the original part of the search process. But concrete evidence of who was about to land the job was increasingly harder to come by as the process narrowed down under Reddin.

For many within the Welsh club game, news only arrived on the day of the announcement. For once, Welsh rugby had just about kept a secret. Sign up to Inside Welsh rugby on Substack to get exclusive news stories and insight from behind the scenes in Welsh rugby.

The process to get to this point has been a long one. In part, that has been down to Tandy’s commitments with Scotland.

Tandy had been keen to fulfil his duties with Scotland for the summer, with their players only learning of the news over the weekend – after their final summer Test against Samoa. Scotland’s governing body had been desperate to keep hold of their defence coach.

It was back in early February, once Warren Gatland, after 14 straight defeats in a row, left his post mid-Six Nations, Wales once again found themselves searching for another coach.

The previous search had been hasty; in fact, it was alarmingly quick. Nine days separated Wayne Pivac’s final game in charge and his sacking.

Gatland’s return was announced in the same press release. A rapid turnaround. Then CEO Steve Phillips denied it was a “sticking plaster” or “quick fix”, all part of the WRU’s “long-term planning for the game”.

In the end, the familiar face he turned towards in order to retain power ultimately did little for him, Gatland or, most importantly, Welsh rugby.

And so, as Matt Sherratt sat in the Vale of Glamorgan’s golf club, still decked out in Cardiff gear, as the world learned that Gatland’s second stint in Wales was over, the search – in earnest – was about to begin.

At the time, Tierney talked about succession planning. The CEO had already been casting one eye at what was out there, with Gatland having survived the previous autumn by the skin of his teeth.

Nigel Walker, the executive director of rugby, hadn’t been so lucky – standing down last December. So, as Wales sought to move from Gatland again, at the back of the room stood Huw Bevan, acting as the interim director of rugby while that role was also undergoing its own search.

It was Bevan, along with Tierney, who kicked off the search process – whittling down 150 names to a much smaller shortlist, with Tandy certainly to the fore of that initial selection.

However, things changed once Reddin was appointed in late April. The former FA performance expert doesn’t formally start his role until September, but those within the WRU are believed to have been impressed with how he’s thrown himself into the head coach search, among other things, on a part-time basis – going beyond the couple of days a week he is meant to be contributing.

The suggestion that Reddin ripped up the head coach search is one said to be wide of the mark by those within the WRU. Instead, he is believed to have simply, just for his own benefit, gone back to the original 150 list and whittled it down himself.

Apparently, bar one or two extra names he added, the shortlist was largely the same the second time around.

Reddin insists, despite the suggestions that Tandy was the initial front-runner prior to his appointment at the WRU, that “there’s a big difference between being on the list and getting through the different stages of the process” as he added the former Ospreys boss had “enjoyed” the process.

“Obviously I wasn’t involved with it for five months, but the last two months I guess we just tried to create a much more rigorous process,” said Reddin in Cardiff on Monday. “We started off with a global list of coaches which anybody could access.

“Against that, I put together a really detailed competency framework, so what we were looking at technically and tactically, but what we were looking at in terms of leadership, in terms of collaboration, in terms of planning, in terms of solving problems, in terms of working with people.

“And then started to map that through some soft referencing across the group of coaches that were available and or interested. And that filtered it down to a list of 30 or 40.

“I then had some initial conversations with some of those people and through their agents which filtered it down to 10 to 12 who I engaged with directly to see whether what level interest was expressed. And then the final couple of stages were quite intensive interviewing.

“I think it was a standard sort of job description. It wasn’t unfit for purpose.

“I think it had been through lots of pairs of hands. With me coming in, inevitably Abi was keen to get my view on it and I was able to bring some experiences of different roles and I suppose dial it up a little bit in terms of the detail we could bring to it.

“I was really grateful for the support to be able to take that level of detail into the process. It could have been a situation where we needed to say “let’s get on with this, now we’ve got some names on a list can’t we move forward?”

“I was really keen to get back to fundamental principles first. I didn’t want to interview just the most obvious candidates.”

Six people went through stage one. That was a structured interview with candidates that lasted for about two-and-a-half hours. Within that, the whole “gambit of characteristics” the union were looking at, as Reddin puts it, was covered.

From there, Tierney became involved in the final stage of interview – which saw two candidates present to both Reddin and Tierney for around four hours with a host of different scenarios and preparation tasks.

“We actually gave him a number of different scenarios, including show us how you’ll plan for the autumn, where your depth is, where you’ll have challenges, what does that look like,” said Tierney in Brisbane. “It was also getting him to talk about how he’ll work with the regions if those relationships have been tested.

“At every point, you really felt that he understood the technical detail and the cultural challenges he’ll be facing. “

It’s understood Tandy had provided a studious knowledge of Wales’ current playing pool, citing how he would get the best out of individuals. The mere work he had put in was seen as inspiring by those within the process.

Reddin has spoken in the past about being wary of a ‘unicorn coach’. A head coach who is seemingly untouchable and unquestionable, working within a flawed leadership structure.

It’s hard to deny Wales haven’t just come from that, but it would have been easy to slip back into it as well. Some of the early names linked – bigger in terms of profile than the likes of Tandy and another believed to have made the final stages, Simon Easterby – fitted into that ‘unicorn’ mould.

“I’m not a believer in unicorns, I think whilst the head coach is a key appointment and clearly they’re the person out front, I believe that systems ultimately win long term, not just coaches,” said Reddin.

“So Steve’s ability to collaborate with the team that we want to build across Welsh rugby but also across the regions through our age group teams is going to be a key part of success.

“I think he’s a relationship builder, he’s someone with great EQ, that came across really strongly across the interview process. As a result I think he’s someone who’s going to collaborate really strongly, that was something that we really wanted to see.

“I spoke to people you might want to put in that frame (of unicorns). We wanted to consider the widest possible amount of people who fitted the criteria.

“As a result, I think we’ve got the right person. It’s always a balancing act. There’s not always a correlation between the size of somebody’s name and the success they can bring.

“It’s about the right person for the circumstances and the qualities they bring. Sometimes it’s not the obvious person.

“What I mean with the unicorn is that I don’t believe one person ever has all the answers. It’s tempting to think of it like that because we put coaches on pedestals and they’re the public facing side of it all.

“But someone with Steve’s humility stood out. He’s still learning and listening to people. He has his strong views, but he’s also prepared to be challenged and that’s someone I want to work with.

“We can all benefit from the proximity and collaboration Wales has. Sometimes, you can have coaches who aren’t open to challenge. Giving Steve an appropriate level of contract I think gives him that trust that he can proceed.”

Factors beyond coaching and profile were also key to the WRU. Part of their search process was finding out early on about not just the availability of coaches, but how the long-term affects of such a sizable rebuild job would affect their family life.

At least one candidate wasn’t able to commit further on that basis, but Tandy – having lived in Scotland for years now – was ready to relocate his family back to Wales.

Again, it’s a seemingly minor thing – but after years of arguing the toss over whether Gatland actually resided in Wales or not given his lack of involvement around the clubs – Tandy simply being in the country throughout the year goes a long way for that alignment that the WRU want.

The process also featured “psychometric testing”, standardised tests to assess a person’s mental capabilities, personality traits, and behavioural styles.

“That was really interesting, to look at where Steve’s strengths are,” added Tierney. “Particularly what came out in that is that he’s a collaborator, he builds alignment in teams and he’s an inspirational leader.

“Those things that came out in the psychometric tests were really important to us. Looking at how that balances with Dave’s skillset and my skillset, so we’re a really rounded team, is important.

“I think it’s got huge potential. There’s a wisdom to Dave, because he’s been there and transformed three high performance systems.

“I described what Steve brings, and this came out really strongly in the process, is a curiosity. Wanting to learn, wanting to continually develop – not just himself, but his team and his players.

“So I think that combination – Dave having gone through transforming and being able to work with Steve on that, and Steve wanting to be curious – is going to be a really fantastic dynamic.”

After a protracted process, the final protagonist has been settled upon. CEO, DoR, coach – all now in place. This close-knit triangle, tasked with turning around Welsh rugby’s fortunes, can finally get on with the difficult – and lengthy – job at hand.