IT could be that there has been an excess of concern about George North’s repeated concussions but it is clear that Warren Gatland needs to get him playing again. Five months have passed since North’s last game and it was the Wales coach himself who expressed the most significant concern.
If Gatland does not select his “man-child” — Phil Dowson’s nickname for North at Northampton — against Ireland in Dublin on Saturday in the second of Wales’ three World Cup warm-up Tests, he would not be giving him a fair crack at fitness for the tournament.
North received his most recent knock on the head against Wasps in March, and went through the final part of the return-to-play protocol at Wales’ Colwyn Bay camp less than a fortnight ago. Gatland could have brought that forward had there been any need.
Without Jonathan Davies at centre — with North an option to move from wing — and with too many fringe candidates having proved unworthy in the first Ireland game in Cardiff a fortnight ago, Wales need the rest of their assets at their best at the tournament.
This includes North, and if anything further were to go wrong it hardly bears thinking about, for the player and the team. After four concussions in five months, Gatland told The Sunday Times he was worried about North’s future.
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In the event, Gatland’s entirely innocent suggestion that it would be in Wales’ interests if North were unfit to return for Northampton last season was borne out because North’s recovery was too slow for Saints, but just right for Wales.
At no point did Gatland try to put pressure on the Northampton coach Jim Mallinder to stand down North, nor did Gatland even imply such a thing. But North needs to play rugby and at most has just the two opportunities provided by Ireland and, a week later in Cardiff, Italy.
The same is true of Wales’ leading tighthead prop Samson Lee, who has been out a fortnight longer than North since rupturing his Achilles tendon during the Six Nations. Time is even tighter, as Gatland intends giving Tomas Francis of Exeter his debut at the Aviva stadium.
No problem there. Since attracting Wales’ interest, York-born Francis has never rescinded the desire he had expressed to represent the land of his grandmother from Abercrave. He is finally about to be snared.
But if Lee stumbles on his dodgy ankle, it will be expecting plenty of a player with one season’s Premiership experience to turn into the scrummaging rock everyone, including Gatland, thought Lee was becoming until he was hurt.
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When he was left out of the shadow side who were beaten 35-21 by Ireland at the Millennium stadium last week, Francis’ Exeter coach Rob Baxter was on to him straight away to check he would change his affiliation while there was still time. No way.
Even uncapped, Francis’ commitment is unimpeachable, making him England’s loss — just like Ross Moriarty. Moriarty, English-born to a prominent Welsh rugby family, confirmed a more obvious allegiance when he won his first cap.
The requirement for Gatland to trim his present squad of 38 to the World Cup 31 a week tomorrow makes the return Irish match an awkward exercise in giving people rugby who need it, having a final look at the remaining contenders and finding his best combination. But above all he needs a convincing performance, no matter who is named on Thursday. However predictable it may have been, the home defeat by Ireland was a let-down against opposition no higher up their selection pecking order but with vastly more experience.
In 2011, Wales played well in all their rehearsal games, including the narrow defeat at Twickenham, before the World Cup and took momentum into a tournament that worked out far better than they could reasonably have predicted.
Four years before that, the 60-point pre-cup hiding at Twickenham, quite apart from being a savage further jolt to already low morale, was a precursor of what was to happen. Welsh rugby being what it is, there will be another lurch if a much stronger Wales team do not fare better in Ireland than their juniors did recently in Cardiff.
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Bear in mind that after the gentle introduction of Wales’ World Cup opener against Uruguay they have six days before the England Pool A game at Twickenham, now less than five weeks away and a game that threatens hyperventilation for anybody who remains unprepared. And then there are Fiji and Australia to follow.
“I don’t believe Twickenham holds any fears for us,” Gatland has also told The Sunday Times, a remark reflecting his view that because visiting teams raise themselves at the Millennium — Ireland being the latest example — it can be at least as gruelling at home as away.
When it comes to Gatland’s “juniors”, this refers both to his preferences and the ages of most of the side beaten by Ireland. The exceptions of Mike Phillips, James Hook and Richard Hibbard — all thirtysomethings of long experience — had all been ditched before Gatland got round to thinking of Dublin.
In one way it was no surprise. Rhys Gill, Dan Biggar and Scott Baldwin are Wales’ first-choice scrum-half, fly-half and hooker – Gill and Baldwin in succession only last season to Phillips and Hibbard. Even if they had been retained, Phillips, Hook and Hibbard would have been no more than back-up players.
But they also had the misfortune when the Irish prevailed at the Millennium stadium of being mostly surrounded by callow youths who were plainly not up to the job. It was asking plenty, in fact too much, of them to make up for such a lack of experience.
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Even without them, Gatland will have almost all of his 2011 semi-finalists at his disposal next month. That is a cause of necessary reassurance, as long as nothing befalls any more of them between now and these next two games and, at long last, the World Cup itself.