Inside the search for the final four-hour interview

ON Monday, roughly 10,000 miles separated Welsh Rugby Union chief executive Abi Tierney and director of rugby and elite performance Dave Reddin.

- BEN JAMES

Two points of a triangle - one in the southern part of Brisbane’s CBD, the other in Cardiff’s Principality Stadium - speaking almost simultaneously about the new Wales head coach.

Rarely, if ever, has a Wales coaching announcement spanned time zones in such a manner.

The third point of this new triangle, Steve Tandy, is enjoying some well-deserved downtime after his final summer tour with Scotland.

He'll arrive in Wales next month, ready to start work in, as his new boss Tierney describes it, his “destiny job”.

As triangles go, it was - by Welsh rugby standards at least - a well-connected one in terms of external interference. Or rather, the lack of it.

Even, as things currently stand, with the points of the triangle spread all over the globe, news of Tandy's appointment never became overwhelmingly apparent until it was made official.

Sure, it was known he was the front-runner - as first reported by us back in April - in the original part of the search process. But concrete evidence of who was about to land the job was increasingly harder to come by as the process narrowed down under Reddin.

For many within the Welsh club game, news only arrived on the day of the announcement. For once, Welsh rugby had just about kept a secret.

The process to get to this point has been a long one. In part, that has been down to Tandy’s commitments with Scotland.

Tandy had been keen to fulfil his duties with Scotland for the summer, with their players only learning of the news over the weekend - after their final summer Test against Samoa.

Scotland’s governing body had been desperate to keep hold of their defence coach.

It was back in early February, once Warren Gatland, after 14 straight defeats in a row, left his post mid-Six Nations, Wales once again found themselves searching for another coach.