Wales v Australia

[Sourdust]

All that said, I'm still annoyed at the schedule. I see no need to keep eagerly queuing up for these autumn hammerings. The Gatland adage of "Play the best to beat the best" is surely past its sell-by date now? It just doesn't work. How long do we need?

I can't agree with you on that front, we aren't as good as the best a lot of the time and we have beaten SA at home, run them very close away and lost very narrowly to Australia on several occassions, there is little to no point in playing inferior teams imo. Also players want to play against the best teams and supporters want to watch them play the big teams, the stadium would be half empty if we played Canada.

I accept the logic of "Play the best", in theory. But the facts disprove it. Two decades of playing SANZAR teams regularly and our record against them has not significantly improved. Now, it could be argued that the intensity of those games has stood us in good stead for the 6N; but the other 6N teams have the same "advantage" and most of them can afford the injuries more than we can. Can you honestly say we look more like beating NZ now than we did in 2002? And I know lots of those games against Aus FELT close, but when you lose 13 in a row you should be able to see that that is at least partly illusory. To my mind at least, the constant pressure of inevitable autumn defeats has a corrosive effect on morale. We tell ourselves that we're learning how to beat them, but all that seems to happen is an annual refresher for them on how to beat us. I'd fancy us far more against an Aus or NZ team that hadn't played us for a few years, who weren't 100% confident of what to expect, and whose individuals didn't have half a dozen wins against us already on their CVs.

The money is a different argument altogether, and one I can't really counter except to raise the usual questions about how the WRU spend it anyway.

[ALunpg]

For all the positive side it was basically errors which were our downfall and some of those were punished. I am not sure they would have been by lessor team so that's the crux for me .. do we want to be punished for these errors or get away with them and then repeat them later and then get punished it is always a dilemma.

Yep there were questions in on and about the tries scored on both sides but on the balance the Aussies looked more likely to come out on top. That said they were not that much better ...just less errors and a bit of magic.

So was the change positive ..overall yes...I liked what I saw... my only concern we still need to have some common sense on what area of the field we play.

On a positive note whatever we did was properly examined and tested ...there were few gimme shots and that for me is good for Wales and good for the players as a reality check on where they are.






.

[Buggaluggs]

no way that was a try

Neither was the welsh try 10 seconds before the end,he was in touch before he grounded the ball.

That's the 'try' i was referring to. Keep up!

[Lord Llandaff]

no way that was a try

Neither was the welsh try 10 seconds before the end,he was in touch before he grounded the ball.

No he wasn't, he was in the air

[Numbers]

The fact we only missed 3 tackles out of 150 is quite pleasing, obviously having Owen Williams at 12 has not weakened the defence too much (tho it does offer gainline success for the oppo), other than Halfpenny and Biggar all the backs made at least 1 clean break (JD, Sanjay & Steff made 2 each).

I would have liked to have seen the bench a little earlier, Aled Davies offers greater speed through the phases.

I think I'd prefer Priestland to be given a go at 10 in the next game as I think this style is more suites to him, if Gatlans is true to his word we could see a Priestland/Patchell 10/12 combo which would be interesting.

Faletau had his worst game in a Wales shirt, however he wasn't all that bad (I don't think I've ever seen him drop the ball twice in the same game before).

Navidi tackled everything, he looks more like a 6 to me tho these days.

Amos looked sharp when he came on and ran a nice angle to get right up the line following the AWJ break.

All in all I think it's a game we can be quite happy with, we have learnt that the players that came in on Saturday can hack it at this level so that's something we've gained and with the players getting used to the style we should see steady improvements regarding execution.

[ALunpg]

So it seems Samson Lee could be out for the next matches ..so he was injured .
Just to stop all this happiness about a new style the Doc has been called up and Scott Andrews .
Ah I don't like Mondays. ..

[Numbers]

So it seems Samson Lee could be out for the next matches ..so he was injured .
Just to stop all this happiness about a new style the Doc has been called up and Scott Andrews .
Ah I don't like Mondays. ..

They missed a chance to call up Corey Allen or Beck, they say they have Scott Andrews for backup for the SA game as Tomas Francis won't be available, but Andrews is on loan to Bath so surely they don't have to release him unless there is an agreement in place.

[ALunpg]

So it seems Samson Lee could be out for the next matches ..so he was injured .
Just to stop all this happiness about a new style the Doc has been called up and Scott Andrews .
Ah I don't like Mondays. ..

They missed a chance to call up Corey Allen or Beck, they say they have Scott Andrews for backup for the SA game as Tomas Francis won't be available, but Andrews is on loan to Bath so surely they don't have to release him unless there is an agreement in place.

Yep and Yep....there does not seem a lot of joined up writing as part of these call up..I would have preferred to see one of the Blues tight head young guns personally.

I think they are really missing some of the reasoning in that the Welsh Rugby public in general would support and welcome testing out a further few new bloods if it allowed us to see more what they did at the top level.

Tight head is the position we seriously need to develop with someone really comfortable with ball in hand or this new plan will be one man short all the time we need to get them on board and do some hard work to develop them.

I could never see one of our present two first choice tightheads getting up and scoring the try that Graham Price did many moons ago and that needs to change.

[Sandydragon]

The fact we only missed 3 tackles out of 150 is quite pleasing, obviously having Owen Williams at 12 has not weakened the defence too much (tho it does offer gainline success for the oppo), other than Halfpenny and Biggar all the backs made at least 1 clean break (JD, Sanjay & Steff made 2 each).

I would have liked to have seen the bench a little earlier, Aled Davies offers greater speed through the phases.

I think I'd prefer Priestland to be given a go at 10 in the next game as I think this style is more suites to him, if Gatlans is true to his word we could see a Priestland/Patchell 10/12 combo which would be interesting.

Faletau had his worst game in a Wales shirt, however he wasn't all that bad (I don't think I've ever seen him drop the ball twice in the same game before).

Navidi tackled everything, he looks more like a 6 to me tho these days.

Amos looked sharp when he came on and ran a nice angle to get right up the line following the AWJ break.

All in all I think it's a game we can be quite happy with, we have learnt that the players that came in on Saturday can hack it at this level so that's something we've gained and with the players getting used to the style we should see steady improvements regarding execution.

Aye, our defensive cockups weren’t his fault. Roberts might have stopped attack with more of a thud, but this level of defence I can live with if it means we look less one dimensional.

On paper the bench looked very weak, I was pleasantly surprised by some of their performances.

I do think that on current form, Priestland offers more than a Biggar, particularly ifs Halfpenny is going to take kicks at goal.

[Sandydragon]

So it seems Samson Lee could be out for the next matches ..so he was injured .
Just to stop all this happiness about a new style the Doc has been called up and Scott Andrews .
Ah I don't like Mondays. ..

Oh dear Lord. Why?

[ALunpg]

I think it was Gatland commenting on the sad injury to JD when he said it's time to see the Doc and Howler went and called him.
It seems like a joke ...but it's reality.