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Warren Gatland responds to Mike Phillips attack as son left 'more upset than me'
Warren Gatland refused to rise to the bait after former Wales star Mike Phillips' volatile social media outburst, insisting he will take his comments with a pinch of salt.
The Wales head coach has been the subject of criticism from a host of former players, including Jamie Roberts, Mike Phillips and Dan Biggar, in the wake of a first ever home defeat to Fiji. Former Wales scrum-half Phillips was particularly scathing, taking to social media platform X to attack Gatland; a coach who made him a key part of both his Wales and British & Irish Lions squads.
"You're on £600k a year and don't even have to win! How the WRU bring this guy back is just nuts!," tweeted Phillips. "Laughing all the way to the bank.
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"When I see this guy talking about family it makes me cringe. Did he speak to me at the end of my career, did he f***!
"I won for this guy. This bloke is only out for himself, and it kills me to see all this bull**** praise he's getting.
"He deserves to be kicked out, like he did to so many quality Welsh players!"
But Gatland refused to get riled up by Phillips' comments, which many have taken to be a personal dig.
"I hadn’t seen the comments," said Gatland. "My son rung me about that this morning and said 'Have you seen the comments?'
"I said 'no'. He was probably more upset about them than I was.
"The thing with Phillsy (Mike Phillips) is that he was a great player for Wales, probably one of the best to pull on the Welsh jersey. Probably some of the things that have happened to him have been a little bit sad.
"I take some of those comments with a little bit of a grain of salt."
Arguably the most significant piece of criticism came from former Wales centre Roberts, who is now an independent non-executive director on the Welsh Rugby Union board, who covered the game for S4C. Given Wales are on a run of 10 successive defeats, an unwanted record Gatland shares with Steve Hansen's class of 2002-03, Roberts insists he doesn't believe Wales have moved forward.
"He says they are growing as a group," he said during S4C's coverage of the defeat to Fiji. “I have to disagree to be honest.
“Losing 10 on the bounce - that's the worst Wales have been in the professional era.
"I understand the spin Warren is trying to give but sorry, I don't think Wales have moved forward."
Gatland insists he hasn't got an issue with Roberts' comments but says the former centre's comments have not gone down too well with certain people.
"I will probably be in trouble if I am called to a WRU board meeting!," joked Gatland. "I don't have any issues with it.
"He is paid to do a job from a punditry point of view and there are no issues from my perspective. I know there are a couple of people who have contacted him and sent him messages and said he was a bit out of line but that's their opinion as well."
