Gatland saw his side beaten 29-18 by England at Twickenham yesterday, a defeat that ended their hopes of a record-breaking hat-trick of successive 6 Nations titles with one week of the Championship remaining.
The man who has led Wales to Grand Slams in 2008 and 2012 and a World Cup semi-final in 2011, as well as last year’s Championship crown, made just two alterations to his team to face England from the one that beat France 27-6 but he has hinted that selection for the Scotland game is now wide open.
“There’s an opportunity to do that next week, to look at one or two players,” said Gatland, who names his team at 11am on Thursday but won’t have Leigh Halfpenny available after he suffered a shoulder injury late on in London.
“There have been players coming off the bench who have done really well. Maybe they deserve a reward for good displays. We have been pretty loyal to players this campaign, but we will reflect on it over the next 48 hours.”
Gatland freely admitted that his team hadn’t hit the heights the nation has become accustomed to over recent seasons when they ran out at Twickenham on Sunday, with tries from Danny Care and Luther Burrell seeing England pick up a first Triple Crown since 2003.
But, while the result now means Saturday’s game against the Scots won’t have an impact on who wins this year’s title, Gatland knows that a positive performance and a third victory of the campaign is still of massive importance as far as the future is concerned.
“There’s plenty for us to work on and a good performance next week against Scotland is paramount,” added Gatland.
“We’ll put our hands up and say that in this tournament we’ve been pretty inconsistent. There are times that we’ve played exceptionally well and other times where we haven’t been as accurate and as good as we know we can be. And that’s been disappointing.
“Teams are pretty close in this competition. I think the four top teams are all capable of beating each other on their day if they get their performance right and England got their performance right. We just didn’t retain the ball for long enough. We were also on the wrong end of the ledger when it came to scrum penalties and a yellow card.
“I thought we were better in the second half. We spoke about that at half-time – there were a few missed tackles by our tight five and we killed ourselves by the number of turnovers we conceded during the game.
“Next week is a vital game for us to finish the campaign on a positive and look forward to the summer and the tour of South Africa. And then, once next week is over, the focus is on the countdown to preparing and planning for the World Cup.”
