Wales aim for a royal performance after Prince Charles visit
BUSINESS and pleasure have been an easy mix at this World Cup. For proof, witness the large numbers attending the midweek pool games, seemingly leaving the office with just enough time to pull a replica jersey over the top of their shirts and ties.
Even Prince Charles managed to get squeeze in some extra-curricular on his own business trip, popping in yesterday morning to watch Wales train ahead of their semi-final with South Africa on Sunday having been in Tokyo for the enshrinement of a new emperor on Tuesday.
“I think (Wales prop) Wyn Jones tried negotiating some deal with him for land,” joked hooker Ken Owens.
“They’ve got neighbouring farms, I think. No, we just had a quick conversation. He just said, ‘They’re bloody big buggers, aren’t they?’ and left it at that. He just wished us all the best, really.”
While not quite taking the attention being afforded to other semi-final of England against New Zealand one day prior, the game figures to be a finely balanced one, with Wales having the recent edge over the Springboks, winning the past four meetings.
As Owens notes though, no side has made greater strides between the draw for this competition being made in 2017 and it eventually rolling around last month than South Africa. As Ireland showed against the All Blacks, recent results mean little come this stage.
“They’re hugely physical,” said the Scarlets man. “Everyone has spoken about that being bred in them but they’re a quality outfit.
“You can see the growth in their squad over the past couple of seasons under Rassie Erasmus. They’re a very well-coached team. They’re a quality side.
“They’ve had some big results and gone to New Zealand and got a draw. They’ve definitely improved over the last two or three years. We’ve won the last four against them but form goes out of the window and records are there to be broken.
“We’re just looking forward to the opportunity to play in a World Cup semi-final, play against one of the best teams in the world and hopefully get a result.”
They should be boosted by the return of influential centre Jonathan Davies.
Davies, man of the series on the Lions tour to New Zealand in 2017, was due to feature against France last week but was pulled between the team being named and kick-off in Oita thanks to the re-occurrence of knee injury he sustained against Fiji in the pool stages.
“He seems OK,” confirmed skills coach Neil Jenkins. “He is getting back to it, so I would like to think he is going to be taking a full part this week in training and obviously be fit for Sunday.
“He is a key player for us, a big player, someone that we need fit, realistically. Owen (Watkin) did exceptionally well on Sunday and is a talented player, but the more numbers we have, the better.
“Jon is a world-class player and you need your world-class players fit, and hopefully he will be available for selection.”
LAST Saturday, shortly after lunchtime, it turned into a WhatsApp day — a ‘WTF’ WhatsApp day. Hundreds of WhatsApps pinging throughout the day to the point that I put the phone onto silent mode — to mirror Ireland’s mood in the dressing-room.
After the big day and I now know how those brides feel when the groom doesn’t show. For anyone who was on that park last Saturday, that is how they will feel forever. Ireland once again didn’t show.
Later in the day a WhatsApp arrived from Simon Geoghegan — there is no one in Christendom who speaks the plain truth with more conviction than the Londoner: “We did better than that”.
Twenty-four years of evolution and progress. A quarter of a century of exact science and pre-determination bested by a team in 1995 that went back to their day jobs when they went home from Johannesburg.
The only other time Ireland played New Zealand at the World Cup was in 1995. We scored three tries that night and limited the All Blacks to five and we were close until the last quarter — 43-19 was the final score. We lost, but at least we turned up and got stuck in.
That Ireland team were half-decent but, if you transported us forward to 2019, very few would get into the current side as professionals.
The same could not be said for the New Zealand team. That entire All Black three-quarter line of Sevu Reece, Anton Lienert-Brown, Jack Goodhue and George Bridge would not be in the same class as Jonah Lomu, Walter Little, France Bunce and Jeff Wilson. Nor would the current front-row have got in ahead of Olo Brown, Sean Fitzpatrick and Craig Dowd.
Then you have to make decisions on Ian Jones, Josh Kronfeld, Zinzan Brooke and Mike Brewer. That lot did not win
ENGLAND have addressed their indiscipline issues by punishing players who make mistakes worthy of conceding a penalty during training.
Veteran scrum-half Ben Youngs revealed that Eddie Jones introduced the measure during the build-up to the World Cup in the hope of eradicating the type a World Cup but were a better side than the 2019 version who have won nothing yet.
Making comparisons between sides in differing times can be a faintly ridiculous exercise yet, lest we miss the point, despite some phenomenal victories and championship wins, Ireland have regressed at World Cups.
The losses to Wales in 2011, Argentina in 2015 and now New Zealand in 2019 show conclusively that Ireland are still hopeless at playing cup football. The Six Nations we know is a league competition.
What is most galling this time around is that Ireland were able to put close to their best XV on the park and yet you get a sense that if you picked the best team out of what is left behind operating in the Guinness PRO14, they would’ve given of error that has long been an Achilles heel. Any players who commit offences such as staying offside are punished by being made to do a series of gruelling exercises.
England face New Zealand in Saturday’s semi-final in Yokohama and Youngs, who will continue it a better shot — you know they at least would have landed a couple of punches, defended with far more intelligence and wouldn’t have committed the unpardonable sins of the same level of turnovers or handling errors as this highly experienced Ireland team.
Nor would they nonchalantly have just kicked the ball away to the All Blacks. The sharpest Irish player at the World Cup was Jordi Murphy, who was training and operating outside of the match-day squad.
The most overused saying in sport is that “form is temporary, class is permanent”. It is so over-used that whoever at scrum-half when the team is announced today, knows his side must be pinpoint in their accuracy if they are to topple the world champions.
“We put a big emphasis on our discipline throughout pre-season and at the weekend it’s going to be absolutely vital for that,” dreamed it up is suffering some purgatorial delayed deliverance.
When it comes to World Cups, form is everything. The All Blacks’ form has been permanent for the last eight years. One hundred years of class but form when it matters. How does Steve Hansen manage to do it? He is your stereotypical taciturn Kiwi — the sort of guy who would ask for separate bills at the Last Supper. How does he do it? Is it like turning on a hot or cold water tap or a light switch?
There is no question that Joe Schmidt (above) wanted, more than anything, his team to
Youngs said. “If boys did things in training they were sent to the corner of the pitch to get a bit of a flogging and stuff.
“The punishment would be a few down-ups, a few runs — it’s normally the big boys who spend the time there and they would go with the (strength and condition