[2020 Six Nations] England vs Wales (07/03/20)

[MikeTheNative]

Either way, after Saturday's game, Scrum V and WOL both sang his praises and said what 'a warrior' he was. It's a shame, I just can't see Wales moving forward as they need to with him as captain.

Who would you select in front of him for Wales? Hill is probably the best Wales 2nd row, but has been struggling with injures, Ball is a decent tight 5 carrier but not a great lineout jumper, not particularly mobile either. Rowlands has a good 20 minutes of the bench against France but that's all test minutes he has played. I don't think Adam Beard is currently better than Jones.

I think that's unfair

I mean he's definitely a good rallying figure in that Welsh squad and a passionate player - he's well deserving of his position in the side/as Captain - it's not like there's others that he's blocking the path of.
It's the talk of him being one of the best locks around/a shoe in for the lions that feels very misplaced.

It would be a pretty poor decision to take him, far too many other British players better than him.

 

[klitarris]

Who would you select in front of him for Wales? Hill is probably the best Wales 2nd row, but has been struggling with injures, Ball is a decent tight 5 carrier but not a great lineout jumper, not particularly mobile either. Rowlands has a good 20 minutes of the bench against France but that's all test minutes he has played. I don't think Adam Beard is currently better than Jones.



It would be a pretty poor decision to take him, far too many other British players better than him.

Tbh i wouldn't mind him going as a 'senior' figure on the tour, but i certainly wouldn't want him anywhere near the test side. Mid week captain maybe?

 

[Not Eddie Jones]

I think that's unfair

I mean he's definitely a good rallying figure in that Welsh squad and a passionate player - he's well deserving of his position in the side/as Captain - it's not like there's others that he's blocking the path of.
It's the talk of him being one of the best locks around/a shoe in for the lions that feels very misplaced.

Exactly this. I'm not saying he's a bad player; he's a good, solid international. He's just nothing more than that.

 

[Not Eddie Jones]

I agree with a lot of this post but I think some points need to be expanded a bit. I agree about a rather conservative selection but a lot of this has been due to injuries/unavailability in the backs. Biggar has played well but Anscombe is much more suited to Privac's style and when fit will be a big asset with his good running game. One thing that let's Biggar done is he doesn't really beat players with ball in hand, which creates a lot more space for other players as the defence is worried about 10. Liam Williams would be 15 but he's been injured and has only just come back (I would have swapped him and Halfpenny on the weekend.). JD is a massive miss in the centre and while Tompkins has played well on the whole, he has made a few errors which is natural when your new to test match rugby. Parkes has been Parkes, solid although unspectacular. However it highlights how much centre is a problem for Wales at the moment, no test level players have really come through in the past few years. Watkin is still young and could still prove himself but he hasn't kicked on as much as I would like, to be fair he has had injury problems. I'm sure that is Halaholo was fit he would have started 12, with no centres in Wales currently good enough they would have turned to another late 20 something NZ.

AWJ is a great captain leader and often tops the tackle charts, however the reason he has played so much is that their is simply no other better options, I would disagree that he's always just been a good player. In his prime he was one of the top locks, sadly that's a good number of years ago now. It leads into the next point about the tight 5. The past few years Wales just simply haven't had top quality tight 5 players come through. Lock cupboard has and still looks rather bare, Adam Beard has made big strives forward but I can't see him ever being better than 'good enough' for test level. Seb Davies seemed to be high the skills and athleticism but he's never really been given a chance, I'm sure he's played at 8 more than 2nd row for Wales. Props is actually looking better the past year to be honest. Dillon Lewis, Leon Brown and Rhys Carre have had a bit of a hard time but they are young and I'm reasonably confident that they will become decent test level players. Will they be top level players like Gethin Jenkins and Adam Jones? I'm not so sure to be honest but I'm not writing them off yet.

I've said Wales don't have the test quality/depth for a number of potions. What's the cause of this? Poor coaching? Players simply not good enough? Probably a combination of both to be honest, compounded by the poor performances (and some case management) of the regions the past few years. Some people don't like it but there's going to be an increase in English based players which the family links being chosen the next few years. I would prefer that Wales picks players who feel Welsh through and through and it's not only an option after being over looked by their first country but this is a pro game. If Wales picked purely "Welsh" players they would be a lot poorer for it. Few names to look out for the next years:
Dewi Lake - 20 Yo who was captain of the under 20s, hooker converted from a back row. Tackles, carriers, jackles, work rate like a good back row. Only converted to hooker reasonably recently so throwing needs work, I can see him getting a cap in AI this year.

Ben Thomas - a 12/10, a silky running and great passing game would make him the ideal candidate from new Privac style, played quite a bit for the Blues this year and hasn't looked out of his depth with the step up.

Taine Basham - small flanker (5'11, 13st small) but never looked like it's a problem at pro level. Great footwork, amazing in the wider chanels, a good jackler and tackler despite his smaller stature. Only 20 but has already played over 30 times for the Dragons, there's going to be a question mark about his size but till you throw he in at test level you are never going to know if he's good enough.

I wonder if Wales need to start thinking like Japan? They overcame they're lack of size/power and professional players by choosing a certain way to play ('the Japan way' as Eddie called it) and getting everybody singing from the same hymn sheet. The result has been the Tier One scalps of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy (twice) and SA, and a draw with France in Paris. A good system can overcome a lot of talent problems, especially if everyone buys in. Townsend seems to have been trying to do the same with Scotland. He hasn't quite got there, but it's certainly worth a shot if you're short of talent.

I think Pivac wanted an evolution to his way rather than a revolution, but I would be more inclined to dump the old heads and Gatland-style players, plunder the U20s, the Premiership, whatever it takes, get a group of young players together and immerse them in Pivac's system so that they grow and develop together as a team. There'll be losses along the way, sure, but Wales are losing games now, yet don't really look to be moving forwards.

I hear what you're saying about who is there to replace AWJ, but the guy's 35 in September. He's gotta be replaced sooner or later and I think Pivac needs to take the bull by the horns (but definitely not the horn by the balls - Ba'dum! ). Same with the likes of Ken Owens, Parkes, Halfpenny, Biggar etc. Most won't be around in 3-4 years time, so a lot of changes are going to need to be made. Why not do them all at once?

I do think Pivac is a little hamstrung by the mythology of the Gatland years. They're made out to be a golden period for Welsh rugby, and the Welsh media and pundits are comparing everything he does to these supposed golden years. Pivac probably feels under a lot of pressure to get immediate results. But he hasn't, so he should blow it all up and go his own way. The media and pundits conveniently forget that before last year's GS, Gatland gave Wales 5 years of absolute nothing.

Btw, Basham is an absolutely brilliant name for a rugby player!

 

[Tooting Carmen]

I wonder if Wales looked relatively good during the Gatland years due to how poor the 'blue axis' of Argentina, France, Italy and Scotland often was, plus the occasional away wins over Ireland and England and occasional home wins over SA and Australia?

 

[Leonormous Boozer]

I wonder if Wales looked relatively good during the Gatland years due to how poor the 'blue axis' of Argentina, France, Italy and Scotland often was, plus the occasional away wins over Ireland and England and occasional home wins over SA and Australia?

Wales had some terrible years with Gats too. Great thing about them was that when given a sniff of a championship/slam they'd take it easy.

 

[ncurd]

and occasional home wins over SA and Australia?

Their record against SH teams was appalling 3 wins out of 16 against Australia with the win coming at the start and end of his tenure.

South Africa was better with 5 wins out of 16. But it took 6 years to record the first and when the chips were down, knocked them out the last two world cups.....

@The Alpha Bro is correct if they could smell a 6 nations win they somehow managed it but they were shocking the rest of the time.

 

[Not Eddie Jones]

I wonder if Wales looked relatively good during the Gatland years due to how poor the 'blue axis' of Argentina, France, Italy and Scotland often was, plus the occasional away wins over Ireland and England and occasional home wins over SA and Australia?

That's an interesting thought, so I thought I'd take a look. Taking the Gatland era as a whole (so including the games where Rob Howley was the head coach, as everybody in the media seems to), his record against individual teams was as follows (Won-Lost-Drawn (if any)):

6N Sides (including WC warm-ups, Autumn Internationals etc)
Italy 13-0 (Home 7-0, Away 6-0)
Scotland 12-1 (Home 7-0, Away 5-1)
France 9-5 (Home 5-1, Away 3-3, Neutral Venue 1-1)
Ireland 8-8-1 (Home 4-4, Away 3-4-1, Neutral 1-0)
England 8-10 (Home 5-3, Away 3-7)
Total: 50-24-1 (Home 28-8, Away 20-15-1, Neutral 2-1)

RC
Argentina 6-1 (Home 4-1, Away 2-0)
South Africa 5-11 (Home 4-4, Away 0-4, Neutral 1-3)
Australia 3-13 (Home 2-8, Away 0-3, Neutral 1-2)
New Zealand 0-12 (Home 0-5, Away 0-6, Neutral 0-1)
Total: 14-37 (Home 10-18, Away 2-13, Neutral 2-6)
Total (Big 3 only): 8-36 (Home 6-17, Away 0-13, Neutral 2-6)

T2
Canada 2-0 (Home 1-0, Away 1-0)
Fiji 4-0-1 (Home 2-0-1, Neutral 2-0)
Georgia 2-0 (Home 1-0, Neutral 1-0)
Japan 2-1 (Home 1-0, Away 1-1)
Namibia 1-0 (Neutral 1-0)
Samoa 3-1 (Home 1-1, Away 1-0, Neutral 1-0)
Tonga 3-0 (Home 2-0, Neutral 1-0)
Uruguay 2-0 (Home 1-0, Neutral 1-0)
USA 1-0 (Away 1-0)
Total: 20-2-1 (Home 9-1-1, Away 4-1, Neutral 7-0)

Others
Barbarians 1-1 (Home 1-1)
Brumbies 1-0 (Away 1-0)
Chiefs 1-0 (Away 1-0)
Eastern Province Kings 1-0 (Away 1-0)
Total: 4-1 (Home 1-1, Away 3-0)

Gatland's Overall Total: 88-64-2 (57%)
Overall Total (Tier One only): 64-61-1 (51%)

It makes for interesting reading. He fared better against England and Ireland than I realised, worse against France than I realised (though still not bad), and as poorly against the southern hemisphere big 3 as I thought. His record against Scotland and Italy is exemplary, but they make up half of all his wins against 6N sides (25 out of 50). Together with his excellent record against Argentina, those 3 sides in blue account for nearly half of all Gatland's wins against Tier One opposition across his 12 years (31 out of 64). Throw in the fact that his overall win total is just over 50% when you take out the large number of wins (24) over non-Tier One sides and it's not exactly a glittering resume.

Couple more points of observation:
Gatland's record across three world cups was 11-7. However, if we take Tier One matches only, it's 4-7.
There were 8 summer tour series on Gatland's watch. Wales were 3-5-1 across those series. Again, if we take Tier One opposition only, Wales were 1-5. The one Tier One tour win was Argentina in 2018. The 5 tour defeats were NZ twice, SA twice and Oz, all whitewashes. The 1 draw was Japan.
Gatland's finishes in the 6N were pretty evenly spread. They were:
1st - 4
2nd - 2
3rd - 2
4th - 3
5th - 1

Hopefully Pivac reads this and it relieves the pressure.

 

[Not Eddie Jones]

Wales had some terrible years with Gats too. Great thing about them was that when given a sniff of a championship/slam they'd take it easy.

Yeah, they were great at finishing things off. Interestingly, in all 4 of the ***les they won under Gatland, they were at home in the final round, and won by 29-12, 16-9, 30-3 and 25-7. You do not want to visit Cardiff when Wales have the ***le in their sights!

 

[Vieux Talonneur]

Tbh i wouldn't mind him going as a 'senior' figure on the tour, but i certainly wouldn't want him anywhere near the test side. Mid week captain maybe?

In all 2 of the midweek matches you mean? SA 21 will be a demi tour....bloody ridiculous scheduling.

But that would be an excellent shout. He'd keep the non test players honest and that's always important.

AWJ is on the downward slope in pure playing terms, but he does seem able to galvanise those around him and you have to look at the complete package. But he's not a shoe in for the test team now, so shouldn't be tour captain.

Of the other home nations captains only Hogg likely to be a nailed on starter. Sexton now unlikely, Faz probable but I don't think the captaincy would sit well with him. Many prefer a forward as captain, maybe stars are aligning for Itoje?

 

[Tooting Carmen]

Their record against SH teams was appalling 3 wins out of 16 against Australia with the win coming at the start and end of his tenure.

South Africa was better with 5 wins out of 16. But it took 6 years to record the first and when the chips were down, knocked them out the last two world cups.....

@The Alpha Bro is correct if they could smell a 6 nations win they somehow managed it but they were shocking the rest of the time.

'Shocking' is an exaggeration, surely? Even when not winning ***les, Wales were not usually Scotland/Italy level of bad.

 

[Tooting Carmen]

That's an interesting thought, so I thought I'd take a look. Taking the Gatland era as a whole (so including the games where Rob Howley was the head coach, as everybody in the media seems to), his record against individual teams was as follows (Won-Lost-Drawn (if any)):

6N Sides (including WC warm-ups, Autumn Internationals etc)
Italy 13-0 (Home 7-0, Away 6-0)
Scotland 12-1 (Home 7-0, Away 5-1)
France 9-5 (Home 5-1, Away 3-3, Neutral Venue 1-1)
Ireland 8-8-1 (Home 4-4, Away 3-4-1, Neutral 1-0)
England 8-10 (Home 5-3, Away 3-7)
Total: 50-24-1 (Home 28-8, Away 20-15-1, Neutral 2-1)

RC
Argentina 6-1 (Home 4-1, Away 2-0)
South Africa 5-11 (Home 4-4, Away 0-4, Neutral 1-3)
Australia 3-13 (Home 2-8, Away 0-3, Neutral 1-2)
New Zealand 0-12 (Home 0-5, Away 0-6, Neutral 0-1)
Total: 14-37 (Home 10-18, Away 2-13, Neutral 2-6)
Total (Big 3 only): 8-36 (Home 6-17, Away 0-13, Neutral 2-6)

T2
Canada 2-0 (Home 1-0, Away 1-0)
Fiji 4-0-1 (Home 2-0-1, Neutral 2-0)
Georgia 2-0 (Home 1-0, Neutral 1-0)
Japan 2-1 (Home 1-0, Away 1-1)
Namibia 1-0 (Neutral 1-0)
Samoa 3-1 (Home 1-1, Away 1-0, Neutral 1-0)
Tonga 3-0 (Home 2-0, Neutral 1-0)
Uruguay 2-0 (Home 1-0, Neutral 1-0)
USA 1-0 (Away 1-0)
Total: 20-2-1 (Home 9-1-1, Away 4-1, Neutral 7-0)

Others
Barbarians 1-1 (Home 1-1)
Brumbies 1-0 (Away 1-0)
Chiefs 1-0 (Away 1-0)
Eastern Province Kings 1-0 (Away 1-0)
Total: 4-1 (Home 1-1, Away 3-0)

Gatland's Overall Total: 88-64-2 (57%)
Overall Total (Tier One only): 64-61-1 (51%)

It makes for interesting reading. He fared better against England and Ireland than I realised, worse against France than I realised (though still not bad), and as poorly against the southern hemisphere big 3 as I thought. His record against Scotland and Italy is exemplary, but they make up half of all his wins against 6N sides (25 out of 50). Together with his excellent record against Argentina, those 3 sides in blue account for nearly half of all Gatland's wins against Tier One opposition across his 12 years (31 out of 64). Throw in the fact that his overall win total is just over 50% when you take out the large number of wins (24) over non-Tier One sides and it's not exactly a glittering resume.

Couple more points of observation:
Gatland's record across three world cups was 11-7. However, if we take Tier One matches only, it's 4-7.
There were 8 summer tour series on Gatland's watch. Wales were 3-5-1 across those series. Again, if we take Tier One opposition only, Wales were 1-5. The one Tier One tour win was Argentina in 2018. The 5 tour defeats were NZ twice, SA twice and Oz, all whitewashes. The 1 draw was Japan.
Gatland's finishes in the 6N were pretty evenly spread. They were:
1st - 4
2nd - 2
3rd - 2
4th - 3
5th - 1

Hopefully Pivac reads this and it relieves the pressure.

Mostly good points, but just to point out: Wales lost to the Chiefs 40-7! I think the Gatland years were more a silver generation than a truly golden one - 1970s Wales or early 21st century England they were definitely not. Gatland maximised the talents and abilities of the players available to him, in a way his Kiwi predecessors Henry and Hansen really did not. Now the jury is still very much out on Pivac, but I don't think he has Gatland's capability either.

 

[Vieux Talonneur]

Gatland maximised the talents and abilities of the players available to him

And that, in a nutshell, is the definition of top class coaching.

It's not whether you win things or the style you play, it's whether you can improve players individually and then make the collective greater than the sum of the component parts. Recognising that the "best" 15 players don't always make the best team also helps.

 

[Not Eddie Jones]

'Shocking' is an exaggeration, surely? Even when not winning ***les, Wales were not usually Scotland/Italy level of bad.

Yeah, I agree with that. There were consistently worse Tier One teams than Wales in Gatland's tenure.

 

[Not Eddie Jones]

Mostly good points, but just to point out: Wales lost to the Chiefs 40-7! I think the Gatland years were more a silver generation than a truly golden one - 1970s Wales or early 21st century England they were definitely not. Gatland maximised the talents and abilities of the players available to him, in a way his Kiwi predecessors Henry and Hansen really did not. Now the jury is still very much out on Pivac, but I don't think he has Gatland's capability either.

Whoops! Okay, so that takes him down to 3-2 against 'Others' and to 87-65-2 overall, which drops him to a 56% win ratio overall.

 

[Not Eddie Jones]

And that, in a nutshell, is the definition of top class coaching.

It's not whether you win things or the style you play, it's whether you can improve players individually and then make the collective greater than the sum of the component parts. Recognising that the "best" 15 players don't always make the best team also helps.

I agree, but...

Did Gatland maximise their talents, or did he underachieve with a talented group of players? Wales have had a lot of good players in his tenure. Around the middle of his reign, their pack was the equal of any pack in the world. Yet he only occasionally won anything. And he never really improved the players, he just stuck to his Warrenball gameplan.

Consider their World Cup performances. They lost a semi to France by 1 point, a quarter to SA by 4 points on a late try, and a semi to SA by 3 points on a late penalty. You could come from the 'Little-old-Wales are lucky to get that far' point of view and say 'well done, good effort lads, plucky losers, Warren's got them punching above their weight', or you could come from the 'Wales have a lot of good players and so should be winning things regularly' point of view and say 'they choked big time, every tournament, coz Warren's coaching isn't good enough'.

I suppose my vision might be skewed by the Lions. Wales had a ton of Lions over Gatland's tenure, but of course Gatland was picking the Lions, so did they genuinely have that large number of Lions-quality players, in which case Wales should have won way more than they did with that level of talent, or was Gatland just picking familiar guys who weren't really Lions quality, in which case, how did the Lions do well enough to beat Oz and draw NZ on those tours?

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

I agree, but...

Did Gatland maximise their talents, or did he underachieve with a talented group of players? Wales have had a lot of good players in his tenure. Around the middle of his reign, their pack was the equal of any pack in the world. Yet he only occasionally won anything. And he never really improved the players, he just stuck to his Warrenball gameplan.

Consider their World Cup performances. They lost a semi to France by 1 point, a quarter to SA by 4 points on a late try, and a semi to SA by 3 points on a late penalty. You could come from the 'Little-old-Wales are lucky to get that far' point of view and say 'well done, good effort lads, plucky losers, Warren's got them punching above their weight', or you could come from the 'Wales have a lot of good players and so should be winning things regularly' point of view and say 'they choked big time, every tournament, coz Warren's coaching isn't good enough'.

I suppose my vision might be skewed by the Lions. Wales had a ton of Lions over Gatland's tenure, but of course Gatland was picking the Lions, so did they genuinely have that large number of Lions-quality players, in which case Wales should have won way more than they did with that level of talent, or was Gatland just picking familiar guys who weren't really Lions quality, in which case, how did the Lions do well enough to beat Oz and draw NZ on those tours?

I'd be inclined to believe Warren got more out of the players than anything. Throughout the entirety of his time as Wales coach, the Welsh regions were an embarrassment. The Welsh players combined into the Welsh team did far far better than any of them managed at their regions over the same period.

 

[Vieux Talonneur]

I'd be inclined to believe Warren got more out of the players than anything. Throughout the entirety of his time as Wales coach, the Welsh regions were an embarrassment. The Welsh players combined into the Welsh team did far far better than any of them managed at their regions over the same period.

Inclined to agree although his record against the SH was a bit of a blot on the copybook.

 

[anderton46]

I'd be inclined to believe Warren got more out of the players than anything. Throughout the entirety of his time as Wales coach, the Welsh regions were an embarrassment. The Welsh players combined into the Welsh team did far far better than any of them managed at their regions over the same period.

I'd accept that comment from a Saracens fan perhaps, but from a Bath fan. Was the Scarlets taking you apart at The Rec so traumatic you have blocked it from your memory?

 

[ncurd]

Bah everyone beats Bath