By Graham Thomas
Aaron Wainwright is the rugby coach who has no interest in being “a rugby coach.”
That is to say, the Wales back rower and newly crowned Welsh Rugby Writers’ Player of the Year for 2024, is not coaching with a view to a fresh career when his playing days are over.
Instead, the Dragons star – who is currently out injured with a torn hamstring – takes charge of midweek training at Whitehead RFC for the sheer hell of it.
“I’ve got my level two but I don’t think I could see myself doing anything more serious than this at the moment,” says Wainwright as he sits in the lounge of the Admiral National League Division Four club in Bassaleg.
“It’s just good just to come down and have a laugh with some of the boys and have a bit of a chat with my mates.
“I don’t want to take coaching too seriously in terms of what level I coach at, but if there’s something I think, well, this could work for the boys on Tuesday or Thursday, I’ll check straight in the WhatsApp group and be like, ‘oh should we do this? ‘Or, ‘this is a good move that we did in training today, should we do this?’”
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With his large frame specs and bushy beard he intends not to trim until a scheduled return to action in November, Wainright looks more like a mature student than an established and seasoned international rugby player.
From his days as a would-be footballer training with Cardiff City, to his current obsession of playing online darts against random strangers, “Waino” has always carved his own path.
He has a mix of old-school appetite for village club rugby on chilly autumn nights under weak floodlights, blended with a reputation for focus and intense analysis when he is in the national squad.
The 26-year-old sounds relaxed and carefree whenever he discusses his profession, but there is also a hard-nosed drive that makes him one of the few current Wales players with realistic ambitions of going on the Lions tour to Australia next summer.
“I can come back here and just switch off in a way, calm down, socialise and interact with the people at my rugby club, and then two days later on a Monday I’m back in training with potentially a massive game on the weekend to play.
“That’s a good balance, just being able to come here after games or on a Tuesday night and switch off and just have a chat with some of the boys.
“I find it’s a good contrast but it adds to that surrealness of sometimes being out there playing in a packed-out Principality Stadium in front of 75,000 fans.”
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So far this season, Whitehead – who take their name from a local steel company after forming in the 1930s – have won one game and lost two.
Not quite promotion-form, but much better than Warren Gatland’s recent record of not having won a Test match for almost a year with nine defeats in a row.
Wainwright is maybe not quite at the level to hand out advice to the Wales coach, but as a key senior player within Gatland’s squad, he has a viewpoint on what has gone wrong.
“It’s probably been that balance of having a lot of younger, newer guys coming into the squad and a lot of those experienced guys leaving the squad.
“We need to get some of the younger guys up to speed with things and settled into international rugby.
“If you look back, there’s been a lot of games we’ve been in, where we were close to winning. Two that stick out in my mind are the Six Nations games against Scotland and England. We lost by one point and lost by two points.
“That’s probably where you need a little bit more experience just to see those games out.
“It’s about building and if the regions keep performing and playing well, those guys there get that experience of winning and what it takes to win and, hopefully, that feeds into the international squad.”
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The regions – including Wainwright’s Dragons – are back in action this weekend in the United Rugby Championship after making a promising start.
Cardiff are up in second place after two victories and while the Dragons are down in 11th, their performance for an hour in defeat at Leinster last week – where they tried to back-up their opening victory over the Ospreys – was encouraging for Wainwright and others.
But bookmakers DragonBet still make the Dragons 5/2 outsiders to beat the Sharks at home on Saturday, with the South Africans the favourites at 3/10.
Before then, on Friday night, Cardiff are also unfancied to beat champions Glasgow at the Arms Park. The home side are priced 9/4, with the Scots at 4/11.
As for when the Dragons can expect to have Wainwright back in their ranks, he intends to make at least one appearance for the club before he thinks about returning for Wales in the November internationals.
“In an ideal scenario, I’d try and play for Dragons before anything else.
“I don’t think I would be too comfortable, if selected, to go straight back in and play international rugby, but at present I am just focusing on getting the body right and going from there.”
