No Change for Wales

I made the short journey to Cardiff on Saturday for the first of the Autumn internationals. Nobody I spoke to seemed to think that we could beat South Africa and the crowd in the stadium seemed quite resigned to another gallant failure right from the start. There was none of the nationalistic fervour that we all felt for that famous victory against England at the end of last season.

It was certainly a hard match with both sides playing with total commitment. In truth neither side looked like scoring a try as tough defence and tactical kicking were the order of the day. The strange thing is that the Springboks managed to score three tries. They took their few chances clinically whilst Wales didn’t really create a try scoring opportunity as they got no change from the Boks defence no matter how hard they tried. The first Springbok try came about when Scott Williams was lying on the ground injured. Habana saw the gap and came in from his wing and created a try. The second was from a forward drive resulting from a lineout in the Wales twenty two following a penalty. The third try was from a speculative South African kick up field when the Welsh expected the ball to bounce into touch and were embarrassed when it didn’t and suddenly the quick thinking Boks were in under the posts. An object lesson in taking your chances.

Wales were unfortunate with injuries and lost the influential Jonathon Davies who made two great attacking thrusts during his short stay on the field. Losing Liam Williams at the same time didn’t help either with Halfpenny being shifted to the wing to accommodate Hook. The reliable goal kicking of Halfpenny did keep us interested until the crushing third try but it is the same old story really. We seem to lack a cutting edge and the opposition knows exactly what we are going to do. It is a shame that Eli Walker was injured as he is the kind of player who might have done something unpredictable. 

I guess when the analysts look at possession, tackles, territory etc on their laptops they will conclude that we did all right but in the only analysis that really matters we lost to a Southern Hemisphere heavyweight - no change there then.

P.S. I still don’t understand why the Welsh Championship has no fixtures for three of the four Saturdays when the Autumn internationals take place when the Regions are still playing.