The Changing of the Welsh Guard

One of the consequences of going away for a week is you miss valuable Pooler time. It is a difficult balance to achieve but a bit of winter sunshine goes some way to atoning for missing a couple of matches. Anyway, Pooler managed perfectly well without me beating Maesteg Quins 33-0 in the Championship and beating Brynmawr 0-29 in the Ben Francis Cup. My spies tell me that the Maesteg Quins game was a job well done in atrocious conditions – perhaps a bit of sun wasn’t such a bad option after all.

I did get back in time to watch the Wales v Barbarians match on the TV. In a lot of ways, it was a typical Barbarians match with plenty of open rugby and plenty of tries. This of course was Wayne Pivac’s first game in charge of Wales with his predecessor, the redoubtable Warren Gatland, coaching the opposition. Injuries etc. had shorn Wales of a number of Gatland’s stalwarts so it was interesting to see how the rejigged team would do against a scratch team with nothing to lose. The final score line at 43-33 is exactly what you would expect from this kind of fixture. There were some standout performances from three Scarlets in the pack with Ken Owens and Wyn Jones looking fit and raring to go and Jake Ball whole-heartedly taking on the main ball-carrier role. Wales were prepared to run the ball at every opportunity but maybe this was more about the context than what we can expect in more serious encounters in the future. Still Wales won and showed plenty of flair and there didn’t seem to be any serious injury problems – happy days!

Good luck to Wayne Pivac and the new coaching team they have a tough act to follow. Thanks to Warren Gatland and his team for many happy memories.

Welsh regional rugby appears to be in disarray yet again. Rather like Brexit it is a running sore but I don’t really want to discuss it here. It seems almost incurable.

Next week Pontypool visit newly promoted Glamorgan Wanderers in the Championship. The Wanderers have made impressive progress so far with only two defeats out of nine starts and will be keen to show what they can do against the league leaders. It should be a cracker.

Come on Pooler!