GIVEN that Mike Ruddock, the Wales coach, believes that for 60 minutes at Twickenham on Saturday his team did little wrong, it is no surprise that Wales are unchanged for the game against Scotland in Cardiff on Sunday. Having to cope with a long list of injuries means that Ruddock has hardly been spoilt for choice.
“The team I selected against England was the best team and therefore I see no reason to change it,” Ruddock said. “We believe these players have the talent to put in a big performance against Scotland and get us back to where we belong — on a winning run.”
Ruddock has tinkered with the players who will sit on the bench, though. Michael Phillips, the young Cardiff Blues scrum half, replaces Gareth Cooper, who was injured after coming on to replace Dwayne Peel, and Gareth Delve, the promising Bath back-row forward, is preferred to Alix Popham.
The Wales management are expecting Adam Jones’s dead leg to have recovered, although Ruddock did say that the tight-head prop has not done any contact work this week. The coach admitted that Wales were too often caught in possession against England and overall did not play as well as he would have liked, but he drew comfort from his team’s slow start in the autumn internationals, when they were well beaten by New Zealand but improved sufficiently to beat Australia a few weeks later.
“We need to play better,” Ruddock said. “We need to improve our kicking game. But we are not one million miles away. We showed fortitude in the autumn and were rewarded with our first victory over Australia for 18 years.”