Former Scotland defence coach Steve Tandy was appointed as the new permanent Wales head coach last week following the departure of Warren Gatland in February.<\/p>\n
Matt Sherratt had taken over in a caretaker capacity with a record 18-match losing run finally ending with a victory against Japan in Kobe earlier this month.<\/p>\n
“He’s going to bring that steeliness back,” said former Wales wing Alex Cuthbert.<\/p>\n
“I just don’t know what Wales are, we used to be known as such a hard team to beat.<\/p>\n
“Look at Wales now and we are easy to score against and we don’t score enough points.”<\/p>\n
Tandy has not been a head coach at international level before with Cuthbert admitting the new Wales backroom staff will need to support the new man.<\/p>\n
“Technically and tactically, Steve has been a defence coach,” said Cuthbert<\/p>\n
“It’s very different being head coach so he will have to get his staff right.”<\/p>\n
Shanklin says he is pleased with Tandy’s appointment.<\/p>\n
“The Union is obviously struggling for money,” said Shanklin.<\/p>\n
“There could have been the option to buy someone for \u00a3600,000 but that’s not going to change Welsh rugby.<\/p>\n
“We progressed a little bit, maybe, with Matt Sherratt but I don’t think any coach would have an instant impact.<\/p>\n
“We need a blueprint, that’s key, and a style of play that suits. That will have to change from what it has been to something new and it’s the team he gets around him.”<\/p>\n
Shanklin warned expectations need to be measured.<\/p>\n
“He’s not going to change the team into Six Nations winners,” said Shanklin.<\/p>\n
“We will still go through quite a few losses, because we just don’t have the quality of player other teams have.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Scotland defence coach Steve Tandy was appointed as the new permanent Wales head coach last week following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-305390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114945318121401744","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}