GERALD DAVIES, who knows plenty about winning rugby matches, suggests that with a fair wind Wales are capable of winning the World Cup, let alone extricating themselves from Pool A meetings with England and Australia at Twickenham.
We can but imagine how the great man would have fared in a World Cup. But he was a Lion who won in New Zealand, so nowhere held any terrors for him and in his day he was even better than Shane Williams. He is a partial witness but would he say this if he didn’t mean it?
Undergoing the visitors’ experience at someone else’s forbidding stadium, one occupied by opponents higher in the Test rankings than England and the Wallabies, was as useful a part of the exercise as anything else to do with either Warren Gatland’s playing or selection strategy.
Especially with such an uplifting victory. But what was the significance of the result, on a ground where Wales were trounced on their last Six Nations visit, 18 months ago? Nothing much if the acting captain Alun Wyn Jones is to be believed.
“There is a danger of a lot of people putting a lot of emphasis on these pre-World Cup games when a lot of them are going to count for very little,” he said. Why, then, do they bother? Was there really no significance when England put 62 on Wales before the French tournament of 2007?
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The only game the champion England team lost in the year leading to their 2003 global conquest was conceded by a point by the second string against the first-choice French in Marseille. At that moment everyone knew the ones who were not playing would be Webb Ellis favourites.
Jones has another good point. When you play, you want conditioning; when you are in conditioning, you want to play. On that basis the training torture undergone in Switzerland and Qatar left the Welsh players frantic for some proper rugby.
It hardly looked like it when the reserves, some since omitted, had their chance in the 35-21 defeat by Ireland in Cardiff three weeks ago. The excuse of “heavy legs” carries only so much weight, as it were, and applies just as much to the Irish.
But this was different and maybe by the time Wales play Italy in their send-off match at the Millennium stadium on Saturday their bodies will be winding down. Gatland reports his men ran 50km the week before last. Usually it is 17-20km for backs, 14km for forwards.
Gatland had already settled on at least 25 of the 31 to be announced as the final squad tomorrow. In reality he had very likely decided even more, possibly even every last one. For him, it has not been a process of Stuart Lancaster-style agony.
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To take two among many Welsh certainties, Gatland has George North and Tomas Francis to contemplate, the 50-cap man and the debutant. North is so well-proportioned he has made tacklers wince during most of his Test half-century. Now we all have to wince every time he goes near the ball.
Such is his concussion history from last season that we know – and Gatland has publicly stated – how serious it would be if there were any repetition any time soon. Or ever, really, and rugby being the repeated crash-bang it is, it is bound to happen sometime. Better not to think about it.
North last played for Northampton in March. He, and the Wales management for that matter, had the benefit of a full summer’s recuperation before any of the “protocols” needed to be undergone.
When asked to discuss North as he approached an auspicious occasion, Gatland tempered his congratulation with a reminder that last season he had actually been dissatisfied with North’s involvement in matches and aspects of his defence.
Gatland also came up with the intriguing proposition that as time went by the prospect of transferring from wing to outside centre could become more persuasive. How about next month? If Jonathan Davies were fit – if only – there would have been no mention.
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North is a wing of a different stamp from the nonpareil Gerald Davies, and Gatland wants him busier not only than he was before his season reached its premature end but also than he was in this game. Such a weapon needs using other than as a second-half defensive saviour.
Eventually North made some metres when he worked himself off his wing midway through the half. But Wales want him playing – with and without the ball – as Lancaster says England want, er, Sam Burgess playing. Apparently Burgess has been doing it in training.
In terms of proportion, North at 17 stone is a midget compared with Francis who, at 20st 6lb, is himself a midget compared to the 24-5 he was at university or even the 21-6 he was when Gatland first got hold of him during the recent Six Nations.
At the very first scrum Francis had his comrades slapping his back when Wales won a penalty. But the vicissitudes of international rugby being what they are, by the end of the first half it was the Welsh scrum conceding the penalty that preceded Iain Henderson’s try.
Having discarded Adam Jones, and uncertain whether Samson Lee can recapture his best form so soon after rupturing his Achilles tendon, Gatland has plenty more than just hope invested in his Exeter prop from Yorkshire with a late grandmother from the Swansea Valley.
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He need not worry. Props may have a non-intellectual reputation but everywhere Francis has been over the past two years – since he exchanged Doncaster for London Scottish, before Exeter and Wales – proclaims him as a tighthead with the learning power of a scholarship student.