Warren Gatland addresses Hamilton Boys' High School
23 June 2010, Middle School Assembly
Mr Gatland and the Welsh Rugby Team were welcomed by HBHS with ‘Bread of Heaven’. He spoke about his links with Hamilton Boys’ High School and his current responsibilities as Wales’ Head Rugby Coach.
Warren Gatland:
I just want to say ‘thank you’ to Mrs Hassall. She was my favourite English teacher.
It’s a great honour for me to be back here at Hamilton Boys’ High School – it has fantastic and fond memories for me, particularly being here in the school hall. The school is a bit bigger now than when I was here as a student, but I do follow the achievements of the school very closely, in terms of not only the sporting success – the rugby, rowing and at times the cricket, hockey and football successes, but also the academic success. I noted a little while ago you had a Spelling Bee entrant [Christopher Jury, Year 10, represented New Zealand at the US Spelling Bee in Washington last year] who did very well.
It has been noted, how well the school has done. This is not just in terms of representing Hamilton and the Waikato, but also in terms of the history and tradition it is creating throughout New Zealand, and the proud tradition it is creating as well.
For us, it is fantastic to be here, to be able to train in a facility like this new gymnasium. It adds to the school’s kudos, and helps it to position itself as one of New Zealand’s premier schools. For us as a team, it is great to be here. We would hope that in our game against the All Blacks on Saturday we will play a bit longer than the forty minutes that we did last week. The consolation we take from last weekend’s match against the All Blacks is that at least a few of them were as battered as we were afterwards, so three or four players are unavailable from the All Blacks through injury this week, and we’ve lost one or two as well.
Let me tell you something about the Welsh. These boys come from a very proud history and a proud heritage. We received an email last night about the courage of the Welsh in the past, including in the British Army for example. There was a fight against the Zulus in South Africa [in the late 1800s], where a small contingent of 1,000 Welsh troops killed 10,000 Zulu warriors, and also the battle of Agincourt in France [in 1415] when the English were up against the French. I don’t wish to be rude, but that’s where the long bow was used, and where the signal of ‘the fingers’ comes from, because if you had had your fingers cut off, it meant you couldn’t draw your long bow. So the Welsh used to go around giving the two fingers sign to the French as a salute, because they had longbows and were able to fire arrows at them.
One of the reasons that the Welsh wear red uniforms come from the Army. If you were wounded, the blood wouldn’t show to the enemy that you had an injury, and you were able to continue on and fight. So hopefully for us, if we are injured at some stage on Saturday we are able to get up and the All Blacks won’t see that we’re in pain.
Having said that, I’d like to take this opportunity to present the school with a couple of gifts. We have a signed jersey and a plaque which I hope you will be able to display as a reminder of us. We’d like to thank you for hosting us.