{"id":414140,"date":"2026-02-08T06:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T06:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/414140\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T06:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T06:07:08","slug":"six-nations-what-can-fans-expect-from-steve-tandys-wales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/414140\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Nations: What can fans expect from Steve Tandy’s Wales?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crucially, given well-documented off-field uncertainty<\/a>, man management has been a big feature to the start of the Tandy era.<\/p>\n

The national coaches are frequent visitors at all four regions and made a point of contacting those who narrowly missed out on selection.<\/p>\n

Those who have made the cut frequently talk about “connection”.<\/p>\n

“I haven’t really felt it as much as I have coming into this campaign, how tight the boys are, how connected the boys are,” said flanker Josh Macleod,<\/a> who missed the autumn series through injury.<\/p>\n

“Man for man we’re ready to stand up for each other and fight. It’s purely down to Steve and his coaching group, the values they’ve set – care and connection being the main ones – and the boys have really bought into that.”<\/p>\n

Former Wales hooker Scott Baldwin, who played under Tandy at Ospreys, believes a tight bond gives hope of progress.<\/p>\n

“Steve will know how to get the best out of this group,” he told the Scrum V podcast<\/a>. <\/p>\n

“He will make these players feel like a million dollars going into the game and believing they can win.<\/p>\n

“If Wales can throw the first punch, the pressure is on England. Nobody is expecting Wales to win.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crucially, given well-documented off-field uncertainty, man management has been a big feature to the start of the Tandy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-414140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}