RugbyRebels

A disappointing tournament with a couple of high spots thrown in, the 1st 60 against England and the game against Ireland

Our game is based on defence not attack and these players will struggle to move away from that concept

Tight head is still a problem - look at Furlong, Sinkler for example versus Lee / Francis. We need to see more of Dillon Lewis next year.

Ken Owens is not just an impact player

Jake Ball is a more effective carrier than AWJ, who hassnt seem to make any ground for the last 18 months

We have 4 excellent back rowers, Tipuric does have "physicality", Warburton still has "world class" in him.

Rhys Webb is a great attacking threat but a brain fart away from being a liability.

For a backs against the wall game, Biggar is your man, to orchestrate an attacking game, he is not.

Our centres are massively average and their ability to pass is woeful. For this reason alone Id look at O Williams or Beck in the summer (another option could be Patchell but doubt we will ever see this).

When North puts his mind to it he is some player, he just doesnt do it enough.

Leigh Halfpenny is a class player, BUT, this notion he is a better "link man" and therefore more suited to 15 than Williams needs to be challenged by actually playing Williams at 15 and 1/2p on the wing.

Forwards overall - Lineoout - much better, Scrum - average, Carrying - we really need a couple of gain line busters, we are pretty shit in that department

Backs - take the wrong option too often, for me poor.

Im hoping Habberfield, S Davies, O Williams, Beck, Giles and Steff EVans all get the chance to show what they can do in the Summer tour.
Ditto, Young, Cracknell, and Boyd (and hopefully Dacey)

Our front row is adequate and no more

We need some young monsters at lock

Backrow is fine

Webb is good but we need a backup

Sam Davies needs to start. A few years ago plenty on here, myself included, were begging to see Biggar over Priestland. Now its Biggars turn, Sam is playing better so needs to start

We need new centres, ours are woeful

Our back 3 are ok but need a rocket up their ass

Or tactics are antiquated, we base our game on defence, can't help but think Edwards has to much influence in this. Don't get me wrong, he seems to be doing a great job but defence should not dictate our whole philosophy. Rugby has moved on.

Lineout was much better than it has been for a long time but scrum is shakey.

Howley/Gats seem afraid of change or out of ideas.

Wales look like a 40 minuet team; first half against Italy we were aweful, ok for 60 minuets against England, Shocking second half against Scotland, Ok but not great against Ireland and truley shocking against France.

It's always a bad idea to post whilst angry, but the 6n was poor for us. Simply put, I don't enjoy watching us anymore.

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Wales are the only team, other than Italy, that didn't get a 4 try bonus point from any of the 5 games.

We scored 8 in total but 3 against Italy and 3 against Ireland

All this talk of evolving is just hot air.

I have learnt that we did not step up from the AI.

That any thoughts on that we have got the skills of attacking play sorted out is complete bunkum.

That a lot of our top players are not in the best form of their careers with a few notable exceptions.That should have made some alternative selections and use of others on the bench as ways of building the squad.

That Sam Davies did not get enough pitch time in the Autumn and we paid for it in the 6N

That our front row have not kicked on ( with the exception of Ken ) and we missed Gethin to add a different dimension.

That we have two scrummaging tight heads and neither gets around the pitch effectively enough and more worrying on occasions are not the complete deal in the scrum...that must be a critical plan this summer to improve those two players as there are no immediate alternatives.

What I didn't change my mind on

Is that right now we still have no real alternatives at centre ..neither Beck or O Williams have done enough to convince me they are better alternatives at least in my books and I have watched them..admittedly only on TV so you dont see them end on and see what work they do off the ball...but we will see on the summer tour and I sincerely hope they both move forwards.

That Halfpenny is still a great player and with some real changes to our attacking prowess he can be back as world class.

My personal opinion is that Edwards does not overly influence anyone making attacking plays but still has his say on how the defence looks during an attacking phase.That Gatland is not adverse to change or risk as he has shown for Wales and the Lions...sadly I am not convinced of the same about Howley.

I am thoroughly annoyed with the selection policy ..we have had a poor 6N and shown little positive improvement in the problematic areas. Then to rub salt in we have not even used the opportunity to get players more exposed.

Well done for the Ireland win..close against England and France...poor against Italy and Scotland.

4 out of 10 overall performance .but my worry is..as yet I can't see how it will improve.

But many of the Welsh team better get their Sky TV subscriptions ready ...as that will be as close to the Lions as they will get.

I have learnt that we are not cynical enough. When Barnes asked if Francis was fit enough to come back on, we should have said he was injured. France played it cleverly, we should have done the same.

Never trust a french doctor....

Gog wrote:I have learnt that we are not cynical enough. When Barnes asked if Francis was fit enough to come back on, we should have said he was injured. France played it cleverly, we should have done the same.

It's a very good and challenging point ... are we too much that style?.. speaking personally. ..I would do the same and play it straight ..maybe it has and will lose us matches but in the long run does it balance itself out?

Hopefully it will be something that is asked on Scrum V on Sunday

What can we have really "learned"?

We have no new players. None. We have the same players we had 3/4 years ago, all off (past?) their best form. We have absolutely no idea what style to play because we know Gatball is history, but we're hopeless at everything else. A few new caps will probably get the living shit kicked out of them on the PI tour, then be told that it all proves nothing because the opposition wasn't top-drawer. Then we'll get to the AIs and we won't risk anyone new because we need a good start. Then after our awful start, we won't risk anyone new because we're under pressure and the team deserve another chance. Then it's the 6N again, and it will now be 5 years since ½p scored an international try, and JD2 will still be our 13 despite having had one leg amputated for Christmas.

I suppose the key question is what has the management learnt? I'll be cynical and suggest feck all.

Nothing learnt nothing gained, a poor season for Wales, one to forget.

I'd like to see Patchell in the mix. I know he can be a bit of a maverick at times and prone to brainfarts. But he is basically a good footballer who is also big, fast, competive and has something of the X factor. He can play FH/FB/midfield and certainly has the gas to play wing (would have him there ahead of Cuthbert). He is the kind of player that Wales should be bringing off the bench to give him some high level exposure and knock off the rough edges.

Spiffy wrote:I'd like to see Patchell in the mix. I know he can be a bit of a maverick at times and prone to brainfarts. But he is basically a good footballer who is also big, fast, competive and has something of the X factor. He can play FH/FB/midfield and certainly has the gas to play wing (would have him there ahead of Cuthbert). He is the kind of player that Wales should be bringing off the bench to give him some high level exposure and knock off the rough edges.

Webb at 9 Sam Davies at 10, Patchel at 12 bringing Foxy and North at pace ready to offload to Liam and Leigh. Combined with Tips, Warburton and Faletau/Moriarty it could be beautiful, with the right gameplan

If his defence improved, Patchell would be a great centre.

We learned very little because of the conservative team selections and strategies. Howley's season has been a dismal failure, a dreadful 6N, losing to Scotland and France for the first time in years. And yet we were told that new players could not be blooded because we needed to win these matches.

I hope someone in the Wales camp has learned that our conservative attack tactics are simply not up to the job. Most of us already knew this.

Ken Owens's reputation improved to the point that he is a leading contender for the Lions XV.

Warburton, Tipuric and Moriarty also improved their reputations. Whether Faletau will regain the 8 shirt remains to be seen (although I suspect Gatland will reinstate him without a second thought).

Webb, Liam, North and 1/2p all solidified their reputations.

Biggar did not disappoint, but is at the heart of a losing strategy.

Scott and Foxy did not impress. Foxy had no competition so did not need to impress.

Sam Davies looked good in the only chance he got (and this only through injury) against Italy.

Cuthbert seemed to seal his fate as an ex-international, but who can say, I thought he had done that in the Autumn.



Going forward, for the Wales tour, hopefully we can see the likes of Sam Davies, Beck, Giles, Steff Evans, Hewitt, Owen Williams, Habberfield, Cracknell, Baker, Parry given a chance. It would be nice to see Davies, O Williams, Beck at 10,12,13.

Just been watching scrumV. Shane, Hooky, Adam Jones and Peter Jackson all bemoaning the missed opportunities to blood new players and our pathetic attacking game. None of them can quite bring themselves to savage Howley, but none offered any real justification either.

The only defence I've heard of late that i agree with regards the poor basic skills of some of our players. I completely agree that a national team management should not have to work on the basic passing skills of an international centre. Yet if they keep on picking players who aren't improving, where is the incentive to improve?

It's a mess and frankly I think our management team needs a complete rethink of how we play the game. Sadly this won't happen prior to the next RWC, but let's not be under any illusions. In a 6N where quality was frequently lacking, we were only saved from finishing bottom by the utter direness of Italy.

I thought Patchell moved to the Scarlets because he wants to play 10 not other positions..and if he does not play there at region level I can not see him playing at centre at international.level. So unless there is a plethora of injuries at the Scarlets , I am not sure he gets game time.

There was a clamourning for a while to drop the Doc and play Scott and Foxy...that will solve the problem was the cry ...but still the issue is they are not playing well in the Welsh Jersey and none of the alternatives are any better.

I personally had hoped Alex King would breath some life back. .but it seems the it was already too late.so maybe Steven Jones can get them functioning effectively.

But for me it was a season that promised nothing and delivered exactly that.

We need to make sure we have secured the tackle before attempting to rip the ball. The amount of times a player (mentioning no names....Scott Williams) attempted to rip the ball in the tackle which we then missed boiled my piss.

bruce wrote:We need to make sure we have secured the tackle before attempting to rip the ball. The amount of times a player (mentioning no names....Scott Williams) attempted to rip the ball in the tackle which we then missed boiled my piss.

What boiled mt piss was the insistence to stick with the box kicking when our scrum was poor against France, there appears to be no real nous, if we are getting pinged at every scrum then we don't want scrums, the result of about 50% of those up and unders was a scrum...

A failure to see how shallow the in-goal area was, we should then have tried to kick to the corners (something Sam Davies would have been ideal for) and pressure the clearance kick from the lineout.

ALunpg wrote:I thought Patchell moved to the Scarlets because he wants to play 10 not other positions..and if he does not play there at region level I can not see him playing at centre at international.level. So unless there is a plethora of injuries at the Scarlets , I am not sure he gets game time.

There was a clamourning for a while to drop the Doc and play Scott and Foxy...that will solve the problem was the cry ...but still the issue is they are not playing well in the Welsh Jersey and none of the alternatives are any better.

I personally had hoped Alex King would breath some life back. .but it seems the it was already too late.so maybe Steven Jones can get them functioning effectively.

But for me it was a season that promised nothing and delivered exactly that.

The clamouring to drop ROberts and bring in Scott Williams was based largely, in my opinion, on the expressed desire by the Welsh management to evolve the game and the realisation by anyone and everyone that the game had moved on. Roberts is not a centre who can support a wider game plan. Neither is JD2 to be fair, but at the beginning of the seasons options at 13 were more limited.

Sadly, excepting a few minutes here and there, the management have not aligned the tactics to accommodate a wider game plan. Against France we played 2012 tactics to a large degree - we might as well have played Roberts. Changing people but not the game plan wont change how we play. I agree with Gwyn Jones when he states that the management were spooked by the Australia loss. Howley has seen this as his audition year for the top job and that loss pushed him back to the tried and trusted, and has defined our entire season.

It's strange isn't it how the two Welsh centres can play an wider game quite capably for the Scarlets but not for Wales, this is about the game plan not the players.

North gets singled out for having quiet games, yet we hardly ever give him the ball in space.

The most worrying thing about the 6 nations that I have percieved is our scrum, we struggled to maintain parity in most games, irrespective of what we want to do with our backs we need the set piece to be solid for starters, scrums are a good source of attacking ball, not so much if your scrum is going backwards.

The increased ruck speed against Ireland created more space for the backs and they performed well as a result, there needs to be a platform to play off.

The only time our scrum looked stable was when we had a makeshift pack against the substitute front row. There's the key, Faletau and Charteris as locks.

They played to a standstill against France and deserve a salute for the effort rather than the censorious moaning here. They competed well against England and it was a very close call. Over the whole competition they had 2 poor 40 minutes. Sure there are things that need improvement but it is a good side that no NH side would take for granted. Ball has come on well and is carrying; signs of Francis doing the same and he is still quite young for a TH. Back row going well - great against France, England and Ireland but what on earth happened against Scotland after the break?
Not nearly so despondent as other posters - its a good side with good players which will get better with small changes in personnel and nous.

Numbers wrote:It's strange isn't it how the two Welsh centres can play an wider game quite capably for the Scarlets but not for Wales, this is about the game plan not the players.

To afraid to break the defensive pattern and incure the wrath of Mr. Edwards should they give the ball away?