The Western Mail have managed to create a Gavin Henson story out of nothing, just by twisting a few comments around. Which is par for the course.
It is well known that this blog is far from a Western Mail fan. We initially started up a ‘Western Mail Watch’ category to keep an eye on what rubbish the paper were printing now, but despite good intentions we got bored of so many options. But we have decided to start again.
Today they have managed to bring about a shining example of their art of making Gavin Henson stories out of things that barely relate to him at all. This article on headlined “Gavin Henson warned to get ready for some pain at Wales training camp” is genuinely superb in it’s ingenuity in bringing the Gavin Henson name in without any real link.
It claims in the title that Henson has been warned to expect pain. Only he hasn’t, not really. What actually happened is Martyn Williams called up the only person older than him in rugby (Simon Shaw) and asked him about his experience of the Poland training camp from when Shaw went there with Wasps when Gatland was in charge.
Shaw apparently said that it would be painful. Gatland had this to say
“Simon told him it would the hardest thing he would ever do, but told him he would get a lot out of it and it would make a huge difference at the World Cup,” said Gatland.
“We will be training three or four times a day. It’s very much a conditioning phase. They players will have four days of training, a day off and another four on.”
And that is the story. So where is the Henson link you ask? well apparently Gatland said that the players should expect a bit of a shock. So Andy Howell of the Western Mail, realising that Henson is in fact one of those players, decided to make the story about how Henson will end up getting hurt, and not actually focus on what the story was at all.
Which is about par for the course.
Keep an eye out for more instalments on ‘Western Mail Watch’. If you have any gems from our so called ‘National Paper’ please do let us know about them in this forum thread on our new Welsh Rugby Forum
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Awful rag of a newspaper!!!