It is back to some serious rugby watching in couchland. Yesterday we had Wales v Canada from Cardiff and the B&I Lions v the Sigma Lions from Jo’burg. Both games turned out to be very one-sided but at least the right side won in both cases. This followed on from the All Blacks beating Tonga by a 100+ points and the Springboks winning by 40 against Georgia. A collection of cricket scores indeed.
Wales fielded a blend of new and old and proved to be far
too strong for the Canadians. For large parts of the match Wales played with
verve and invention and at times rang the opposition ragged. It was good to see
a large contingent of Dragons show what they could do. Carter in the second row
looks a real prospect. The only really sour note in the match was what looked
to be a serious knee injury to the redoubtable Halfpenny on what was his one hundredth
international appearance. He has been a great servant to Wales and I wish him a
speedy recovery. For the record Wales won 68-12. They now take on Argentina who
will no doubt provide much stiffer opposition.
Following on from their victory over Japan the B&I
Lions played their first game in South Africa. Understandably there were a few
misfires along the way but the tourists never really looked like losing in what
was a useful warm up game with the final score a resounding 14-56 victory. Josh
Adams continued his scoring streak with four tries and did his test ambitions
no harm at all. Louis Rees Zammit scored the first try but thereafter the
scoring passes went out to the left wing for Adams to gobble up. Man of the
match was Hamish Watson who put in a storming performance and he does remind me
of David Pocock the great Australian flanker. In fact, put Navidi and Watson together
and you might have something like the Pocock and Hooper combination that the
Aussies deployed so successfully.
None of the players who played did their chances of
test selection any harm at all and all will have benefited from a game at
altitude. There will be selection conundrums for Gatland and co to work through
as the tour progresses. Not least of which will be the 10,12 & 13
combination. Russell and Farrell together was not a great success yesterday but
it is early days. Both Farrell and Biggar are proven top class goal kickers and
as such you would probably expect both to be in the twenty-three man test squad.
The question is how to deploy them along with the fine centres available. There
are four more matches before the first test for the management team to firm up
their ideas.
Someone told me that the England football team won
yesterday. I wonder if there will be anything about it in the Sunday papers. I
will go and find out.
Come on Wales
Come on Lions
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