Club vs Country?

RBS 6 Nations Rugby : Ospreys dominate Wales team

You've got to hand it to Warren Gatland - make a thoroughly conservative team selection, but make it look like a revolution - thirteen Ospreys players in the starting lineup.

It's throwing down a marker, allright. It's thinking the unthinkable; pick your first XV, and if they're all from the same place, so be it. A Welshman could never, in a million years, get away with it.

Whether Gatland gets away with it on the field, remains to be seen. On paper, there seems no reason why Wales can't compete a Twickenham, or even (gasp!) win. In terms of experience, the back rows are ludicrously mis-matched in Wales' favour; the half-backs look sharper; there are three lineout options; and if the back three look defensively suspect, so do England's.

But despite all that, scour the press and you won't find a single pundit predicting a Welsh victory. Not one. The reason is not a balanced assessment of the teams' relative qualities - it is, quite simply, History. Time and again Wales have gone to Twickenham with genuine hope. Time and again, they have left in shattered ignominy. In the previous decade of this fixture, they have conceded an average of 47 points, and scored an average of 16. The Welsh "Twickers Collapse" has become a tradition, and seems irrespective of the perceived quality of the side that takes the field.

So, where will it all go wrong this time? Certainly, in the front row, it looks like the same old story of Shermans vs King Tigers - the scrum will be torrid for Wales. If Gavin Henson has forgotten anything about Six Nations rugby, Toby Flood seems well set to remind him. Paul Sackey and Dave Strettle have the pace to at least match Mark Jones and Shane Williams. And if Gatland truly imagines that a bombardment of fullback Iain Balshaw can make the difference, he must know something about Lee Byrne that few others have spotted.

Still, its nothing if not intriguing. And even if the story stays the same on Saturday, in the long term, the new Welsh management team look to have their eyes on the ball. That in itself is worth celebrating.