Pride and Passion: My Autobiography by Warren Gatland

[backdoc]

No reviews yet, but the autobiography season is upon us and Warren's is out on thursday.

Hopefully there will be a significant section on Wasps.

[MarleyWasp]

I've been listening to the audiobook and at the half way stage it's an interesting and entertaining book.

There's a whole chapter on Wasps which unsurprisingly I found particularly interesting, talking about how he put together the backroom staff and the challenges a certain Samoan provided.

One thing I learnt was that the Ulster coaches came over for a day to see how Wasps operated and ended up copying much of the framework. One of the Ulster coaches was Mark McCall, so that's come back to bite us!

The chapter starts with this:

Trevor Leota was different. An Aucklander of Samoan decent, he was only 5 foot 9 inches tall. A statistic that would have done him no favours at all as a professional Rugby player but for the fact that he gave the impression of being 5 foot 9 inches wide. Trevor was not spherical like so many of the games most celebrated front row forwards. He was square. A square with hair like an omelette on two tree trunks.

[DGP Wasp]

I've been listening to the audiobook and at the half way stage it's an interesting and entertaining book.

There's a whole chapter on Wasps which unsurprisingly I found particularly interesting, talking about how he put together the backroom staff and the challenges a certain Samoan provided.

One thing I learnt was that the Ulster coaches came over for a day to see how Wasps operated and ended up copying much of the framework. One of the Ulster coaches was Mark McCall, so that's come back to bite us!

The chapter starts with this:

Trevor Leota was different. An Aucklander of Samoan decent, he was only 5 foot 9 inches tall. A statistic that would have done him no favours at all as a professional Rugby player but for the fact that he gave the impression of being 5 foot 9 inches wide. Trevor was not spherical like so many of the games most celebrated front row forwards. He was square. A square with hair like an omelette on two tree trunks.

 
Great description of Big Trev.  Legend!!

[welsh wasp]

The great Trevor Leota!
I think he used to have minders with him on away trips to Europe - presumably just in case he over-ate. That was certainly the case when I saw him strolling around Treviso the night before the game.

[RogerE]

Trevor - the guy who single-handedly kept KFC UK in profit.

[MarleyWasp]

Another interesting revelation is that Hats attempted to persuade Jonny Wilkinson to join in 2003 (I recall Alex King was considering an offer from Pau at the time). Nothing came of it as Wilkinson was fully committed to Newcastle.

On the subject of Trevor, I was in Canada last year in holiday and decided it was entirely logical to fly from Toronto to Edmonton, where Trevor now lives, to watch Canada play Scotland the day before the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, which I had a ticket for. At the match I saw Trevor from a distance. He's still 5 foot 9 inches wide and gave the impression that he went straight to the pub after work on the Friday and still hadn't been home.