Gatland has selected a 42-man training squad, to be cut in size at a later date, ahead of home and away World Cup warm-up matches against England and Ireland respectively. And he insists Wales are in a healthy position just six months out from rugby’s global showpiece event in Japan.
“The reason that we’ve picked a squad of that number is to potentially give everyone an opportunity,” said Gatland.
“We’ve got three warm-up games before we pick the squad before the last game against Ireland. We’re in a different place at the moment, in 2015 we were looking at building depth.
“We feel like we’ve got a lot of depth at the moment. We have 18 players with World Cup experience in the squad so it’s a matter of planning what we’re going to do.
“It might not be so much of mix and matching in the warm-up games. If I look at the World Cup, we’ll probably go fully loaded against Georgia, Australia and Fiji and potentially make changes for Uruguay. We may need to replicate that in the warm-up games.”
Gatland has also selected two uncapped players in his 42 man squad with Cardiff Blues wing Owen Lane being rewarded for his blistering try scoring form this season. Lane is joined by fellow Blues youngster Rhys Carre with the 21-year-old loose-head prop having impressed this season.
“Owen’s impressed us during the season and has been unlucky with injuries before a couple of other campaigns,” said Gatland.
“He might have made one of the other squads. Unfortunately, he’s picked up another injury on the weekend that will keep him out for a while.
“Rhys has been part of our succession plan. We’ve got a couple of other players on that succession plan.
“We’re looking at nine front rowers for the World Cup. We’ve only picked three hookers at this stage with four tightheads and four looseheads just to make sure that, if we do pick up an injury, we’ve been working with someone else to cover that.”
