Luke Warm-Up

Much was made of the "experimental" nature of both teams at Twickenham on Saturday. Once Stephen Jones had pulled out with seconds to spare, to leave first-time starter Rhys Priestland as Wales' playmaker, things were looking more -mental than experi-. After Morgan Stoddart's terrible injury, Scott Williams - an uncapped centre - took over at fly-half, and things veered toward the farcical. Let it be said that both players did fine jobs under such trying conditions.

Meanwhile, at the other asymptote of the international experience curve, Jonny Wilkinson had his best game in an England shirt for years. If nothing else, this will have given a few nightmares to any Australians watching. If he can make the improvement stick, he could hardly have timed it better.

Both sides will take limited satisfaction from this match. England looked dangerous in patches, and showed calm control when it mattered. In Armitage's take-and-run, they provided the "champagne moment" of the match. Wales struggled horribly to obtain and maintain possession, but did a lot of good things with such limited ball. Most importantly, they looked more positive in attack, and less locked-in to a structure of play.

Warming up for a World Cup by playing England has gone disastrously wrong for Wales on the last two occasions. England still won this match, but they had to fight for it, and an under-strength Wales team didn't look outclassed. With medical updates suggesting that a significantly stronger matchday XV will be possible for the return leg next week, Warren Gatland might be quietly confident of a morale-boosting win. For England, there's the carrot of bragging rights for a Millennium Stadium double this year. How their fans would love that.

As Ye Sow...

England are still moaning about their perceived victimization by referees, with more emphasis on Jonathan Kaplan's performance in Cardiff.

They might, possibly, have a point. It's not beyond all reason that, on a subconscious level, certain refs scrutinize England more closely than their opponents. But there are several caveats to such a concession:

• England have brought this upon themselves, by reverting to their negative instincts, and prioritizing disruption of the opposition over constructive attacking play. They have been one of the most streetwise^* teams in the world for many years, and without a trace of shame. That they have somehow mislaid these skills is bad luck, but frankly, it's all a bit "rich".
  

• Just as northern-hemisphere referees have a partially-deserved reputation for overzealousness with regards to technicalities, so southern refs have had, for a long time, a tendency to favour the attacking side and over-penalise the defending team. Once again, England reaped the rewards of this for many seasons as their muscular forwards allowed Rob Andrew et al. to kick less conservative teams to death.
  

• The majority of the sin-binnings recently suffered by England have been open-and-shut cases. Haskell and Geraghty were stupid, Tindall suffered for the repeated sins of the team after multiple warnings, and Goode's transgression, if understandable, was transparently cynical. They do have a case regarding Lee Byrne, however!
  

We all remember that there was more than a whiff of "payback" when New Zealand bemoaned the forward pass that cost them so dearly in the RWC07 quarter-final. Likewise, England's bellyaching about skewed refereeing increasingly looks to the rest of us like so many chickens returning home to their Twickenham roosts.


^* The standard rugby euphemism for "cheating".

Look At The Scoreboard!

We're still learning this "favourites" lark.

Read the papers and websites in the aftermath of Saturday's fixture in Cardiff, and you could be forgiven for struggling to work out who England's opponents had been. Such was the celebration accorded to a functional defensive plan and a few hard tackles, it was almost as if Wales actually winning the game - by two clear scores, at that - had escaped all notice. Even from neutral quarters, there came the kind of headline that brought either nostalgic sighs or peals of laughter from the pubs & clubs of Wales.

It's only fair to highlight a few dissenting voices; Will Carling being notably, and commendably off-message, and stealth Welshman John Taylor bringing some perspective.

This collective critical navel-gaze may stir derision from partial commentators like the one you are reading. But it will no doubt be fine and dandy by Messers Gatland, Edwards & Howley. They quietly press on with the business of trying to win the championship, with once again all the focus on someone else.

Saturday's game was a new test for Wales, and if they didn't get straight As, they passed comfortably enough. There was no panic when it became clear that, as widely suspected, England were no pushovers after all. There was perhaps a little too much adherence to a "plan A" that wasn't entirely working, but it ultimately proved to be working well enough, and was justified by the result.

In fact, it was the newly-confident English who sought to open the game out more; a development as praiseworthy as it was surprising. That Wales refused to get pulled out of shape, plugged away, and finally doused the fire with water still left in the tanks, provided yet another sign of a team growing as a unit and as individuals.

The midfield handling by the forwards for Leigh Halfpenny's try was a thing of rare beauty, but overall this must count as an "ugly" win; and, in the final analysis, may appear all the more beautiful for that.

The Scent of Blood...

1988.

Salman Rushdie published "The Satanic Verses". Michael Keaton spooked us with "Beetlejuice". U2 released the album "Rattle & Hum". And the Welsh rugby team were the bookies' favourites for the Five Nations match with England at Twickenham...

It hasn't happened since. A generation of Wales fans have grown up as fans of the underdogs. It's taken an age for the wheel to turn, but turn it finally has. England will take the field at the Millennium Stadium on Saturday evening, as rank outsiders. Read that last sentence again. Yes, it's true.

Warren Gatland has no problem with being a favourite. It's a mentality he has worked hard to instil in his Welsh charges; and it does indeed seem to be rubbing off. There is no sense coming from within the camp of the discomfiture without. "Bring 'em on" seems to be the mantra. "Gats" has even found time to indulge in the psychological psilly-pseason. His announcement that Wales have decoded England's lineout calls is a masterful piece of nonsense; it can be doubted, derided, even mocked... but it cannot be ignored. Genius?

There's a consensus among pundits that Wales have too much in just about every department. The cold numbers foretell a hefty Welsh win. Those who recall the litany of recent English drubbings of Wales lick their lips at the prospect of long-delayed revenge.

But it can't, and won't, be that easy. England's fitness, skill levels, tactical awareness and strategic direction may be safely questioned. Their sheer bloody-mindedness, however, should never be under-estimated. If eyes are to remain fixed on the prize, then a close, ugly home win in Cardiff must be embraced if required.

"Payback" is simply an optional extra.

Panic Pandemic

One round in, and 6N players are dropping like flies. For once, it is England who bear the brunt of the plague - not content with robbing them of four starters during the first game, the crock-fates have now targetted Tom Rees and Phil Vickery, leaving the team to face Italy with a decidedly patchwork feel.

Wales have got off lightly this time around, though the loss of Alun-Wyn Jones will hurt. More prominent in Welsh pre-game natter has been the refreshing approach of Warren Gatland; dropping under-performing players from a winning team, and publically explaining why. It sounds common-sense enough, but in Wales, it's little short of revolutionary. Meanwhile, big things are hoped for from Jamie Roberts on his first cap.

There was precious little attacking threat offered by Scotland last weekend, and stripping their XV of both Rory Lamont and Simon Webster has hardly made them look more formidable. This is precisely the problem for Wales, of course - they will now be comfortable favourites for Saturday's game, a position traditionally injurious to Welsh prospects. But a mental toughening is exactly what Gatland has targetted for this squad, so how they deal with justified expectations will be the key factor of their weekend.

19:26 - The Great Strike

The Head had a shocker - the heart is on a roll. Quite how exactly Wales triumphed at Twickenham could probably be the basis of a PhD thesis, if not a whole book. The beating they took in that first half could surely only lead to another of those cricket scores, to which we have become numb? England's superiority - whether at set-piece, in their game-management, or in the incisiveness of their running - was so absolute that many Welsh fans must surely have been tempted to hit the M4 a full 50 minutes early?


And yet, inexplicably - gloriously - England threw it away. The Twickenham shooting party blew both its own feet off. Having clung on heroically, Wales were still there to pick up the pieces and exorcise a 20-year ghost with 20 minutes of punishingly clinical, intelligent rugby. Having been toyed with for an hour, they finished by dismissing England's last desperate twitches with something approaching contempt. It was rarely pretty, but it was in its own way magnificent.

Most encouraging of all the wonders of the day, however, was to hear Warren Gatland's sober reflections. Quick to point out how awful Wales had been for long periods, and equally quick to praise his battered warriors for getting off the ropes and landing the knockout. The sense of a man with his head screwed on only grows. He knows how often Wales have blown a good start in this tournament, and he knows we won't get another gift like this one.

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.