Warren Gatland: I do not find Twickenham intimidating at all

Warren Gatland stoked the flames for Wales’ Six Nations clash with England on Saturday by claiming “I don’t find Twickenham intimidating at all”.

Wales head coach Gatland insisted his side will not be intimidated by this Saturday’s trip to London despite the principality’s nine-year losing streak at the home of English rugby.

Last month, England captain Jamie George explained how head coach Steve Borthwick and his players were desperate to make Twickenham “a horrible place to play” and “a fortress again”, but Gatland was adamant that there was no fear from within the Wales camp.

“No, because the first four times I went there we won; three Premiership finals and a Heineken Cup final [with Wasps],” joked the Wales head coach. “I don’t find it intimidating at all! It’s great when you come in the gates and everyone is outside and you’ve got the fans there, it’s a great stadium to enter. I love the atmosphere and it’s even more special if you can walk away with a win. And that’s not easy to do.

“For me, it doesn’t hold any trepidation. It’s about starting well and stopping the crowd singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot too early. Silence them a bit – that becomes an important factor. We need to start a lot better than last week. We need to reduce the amount of turnovers. The second-half was reflective of how we played against Australia in the World Cup. A number of those things were in our own control, with penalties or lineouts that we weren’t accurate enough. We worked hard this week in trying to rectify these things.

“But we’re not afraid to go to Twickenham, I can promise you. Looking at them from last week, they’ll be better and hopefully we are as well.”

Gatland revealed seven changes to the Wales starting XV on Wednesday with centre Owen Watkin and scrum-half Gareth Davies dropping out of the matchday 23 due to form, and injuries to Leon Brown, James Botham and Sam Costelow. Alex Mann will make his first Test start at blindside after a try-scoring debut off the bench against Scotland last Saturday and Gatland believes the time is right to give the 22-year-old his bow.

“It was a good discussion with the coaches this week about what we did,” Gatland added. “Did we leave Alex on the bench to take a bit of pressure off him and bring him on in the second half for the same impact he had last week? But it’s not where we are. He might find it a lot more difficult – things will be a lot tighter in that first half – but that’s the role that we feel like we’re in at the moment, about making these guys better players, not chopping and changing too much.

“I just hope that people can see that we have a group and it might take a little bit of time but we think that, with time together, this group of players and coaches, we’re going to end up with a quality side; an experienced team. That could be this Saturday, it could be the following week.”