KEY POINTS:
PARIS - Wales' abject failure at the World Cup, sealed by a shock early pool exit when they lost 38-34 to Fiji, highlighted the deficiencies that have been lurking in the domestic game for a generation.
Gareth Jenkins stepped down as coach after just six wins from 20 Tests in 17 months, leaving backs coach Nigel Davies as caretaker boss with the Welsh Rugby Union hoping to announce a long-term successor before the 2008 Six Nations tournament.
The lack of international success for Wales is particularly galling when one considers that grassroots rugby in Wales remains strong, with a very successful promotion-driven lower league system producing intense competition and good standards.
Age-group rugby has always been successful in the principality, but something is lost in development as elite players join Premiership clubs and one of the four regional sides.
Many of those players suddenly find themselves warming benches, often watching quick-fix signings from the southern hemisphere or other members of bloated squads playing in their positions instead of sampling intense game-time week in week out.
A lack of real regionality within the four regions that play domestically in the much-maligned Celtic League and also in the Anglo-Welsh Cup and European Cup, means former rugby hotbeds such as the Gwent vallies are often overlooked.
Coaching standards at elite club and provincial level must also be questioned, with players failing to embrace the physicality and mental attitude required to play top-level international rugby.
The new coach of Wales will have to address not only the structure of the top echelons of Welsh rugby but also question whether the psyche of players needs a complete overhaul to make it more compatible with the demands of modern-day rugby.
The lack of physicality was shown up in the Welsh set-piece at the World Cup, the team struggling at times to achieve parity in line-out, scrum, and most notably in broken play.
In a country obsessed with rugby, the expectations of an ever-demanding public put players on a false pedestal when some are evidently always going to struggle at Test-match level.
The development of elite performers is certainly one area on which the new coach will have to focus his attention.
Welsh rugby great Gareth Edwards is no doubt that it will take a foreign coach to deliver some unpalatable truths that would not be accepted so easily if Wales opted for a homegrown but internationally unproven coach.
"I'd prefer to see us go for a more hard-nosed, overseas coach who will come in and tell us what we need to hear about ourselves," Edwards said.
Current New Zealand coach Graham Henry and long-term assistant Steve Hansen, whose jobs are on the line after the All Blacks' loss to France in the quarter-finals, have both enjoyed a measure of success as Wales coach during the last decade.
Meanwhile, Australian Scott Johnson was widely credited with playing an important role behind the scenes as assistant to Welshman Mike Ruddock during the team's 2005 Six Nations Grand Slam triumph.
But with a number of international coaching jobs likely to come up after the World Cup, the Wales post could be seen by many as a poisoned chalice, and it will take a brave person to take it on with so much to do.
- AFP
