Today’s rugby news as BBC have ‘no issue’ with Warren Gatland and Warburton gives Wales reality check

Here are the latest rugby headlines on Monday, March 11.

BBC reporter has ‘no issue’ with Gatland

BBC interviewer Sonja McLaughlan says she has “no issue” with Warren Gatland initially walking away before a live TV interview after he was kept waiting amid other media commitments.

Viewers of the BBC’s live coverage of Wales v France saw Gabby Logan interrupt the studio pundits to go live to Gatland’s interview, before quickly having to change tact, saying: “We’ve lost Warren”. You can read the full story here.

Footage later emerged showing Gatland walking away 20 seconds after being told they would be going live in 15 seconds, as the reporter pleaded with him to stay. It’s understood Gatland had already been waiting for some time and instead went to do an interview with S4C, who were also waiting, before returning to do the BBC interview minutes later. The off-camera incident, which was broadcast on the world feed used by some overseas broadcasters, left viewers confused after being shared widely on social media.

McLaughlan wrote on X: “Just to make clear. No issue with Warren Gatland post match. We asked for a short delay so we could do the interview live. But Warren had to do S4C before coming back to air his thoughts on the BBC. Always enjoy talking to him and today no different.”

You can watch the clip below.

Sam Warburton’s ‘reality check’ for Wales

Former Wales captain Sam Warburton says the “reality check for Wales” is that they are not “physical enough” and that the players need to be found from somewhere.

Speaking in the BBC studio after the game, he said: “I’m going to sound like a broken record but you can’t play the game and be that inferior physically. If you don’t have big skilled athletes on the field, when you have big guys coming at you and you can’t stop them it is going to be a tough game. We don’t have the player pool to match the power of England, Ireland and France and we need to find the players from somewhere.”

He added: “The word power was used a lot in commentary and rightly so. You can talk a lot about the fluffy things but when you lose the physical battle then more often than not you won’t win the game.

“You saw the warning signs in the first half and Wales were holding on in the game when France’s big ball-carriers were come off the number nine.”

Martin Johnson agreed saying the Wales team will have to get over the defeat very, very quickly: “The writing was on the wall before the subs were made. Wales were trying to stem that power and as the first half went o