We’re 240 minutes away from glory...
GATLAND BELIEVES WALES CAN GO ALL THE WAY
UNBEATEN, unflustered, fit and focused — Wales are fired up to face France in the quarter- finals believing they have their best ever chance of World Cup glory.
They confirmed Sunday’s meeting with a bonus-point win over Uruguay. In truth it was sloppy, slapdash and scrappy with the second string doing little to suggest they can force their way into the line-up for the big games to come. But all you needed to do was look at the players who watched from the stands — Alun Wyn Jones, Ken Owens, Liam Williams, Jonathan Davies, George North and Dan Biggar among them — and realise that the weekend is going to be nothing like yesterday.
Coach Warren Gatland has kept things low-key in his tournament press conferences so far in Japan — but with the knockouts looming he went back into Testmatch rhetoric.
He believes this could be Wales’s time, as does the captain.
‘Alun Wyn Jones probably said the best thing when he told the players, “We’ve got 240 minutes left to achieve something special”,’ Gatland said after the Uruguay win.
‘We’ve been pleased with what we’ve achieved in the last couple of years, especially in games that have mattered. We have belief that if we play well enough against any side we can beat them. Having said that, there are a lot of good teams left. There is a massive amount of motivation for this quarter-final. If we win the quarter-final we’re here for the rest of the tournament.’
Based on the performance yesterday he will not be nursing a selection headache for the France match.
Leigh Halfpenny — who took eight points by converting the four tries — may be a bench option to close out tight Tests, but otherwise those with an outside shot look like they will remain fringe men.
It was all very tired and ragged here. Rhys Patchell dropped the ball a lot, Hadleigh Parkes missed passes, Hallam Amos was denied a hat- trick of tries, the last because he tried an unnecessarily acrobatic finish and dropped the ball out of one hand, and it was altogether fairly slipshod.
Los Teros were incredibly aggressive — so much so that Wales were left livid with some of the on-field acts, including what looked like a punch in a ruck by captain Juan Gaminara.
The flanker incensed the Welsh players at half-time too. When Parkes kicked out to end an underwhelming half 7- 6 up, Gaminara loudly bayed in the faces of his opponents. He was then shoved while he ran down the tunnel by Ross Moriarty, slipped on a purple carpet and a few players piled in.
It all calmed down, but there could be disciplinary knucklewraps for the Uruguayans to take home with them.
They hassled and harried Wales, and German Kessler piled over like a Sherman tank for a secondhalf try, but Smith’s close-range dart, Adams’ fifth of the tournament on the left wing, a penalty try from a collapsed rolling maul, Tomos Williams’ jink and Gareth Davies’ tap-and-go were enough to win it.
There was positive news afterwards from Gatland too — North (ankle), Jon Davies (knee) and Biggar ( concussion) are all expected to be fit for France — which is why the coach was so bullish.
‘The medics are hopeful that in a couple of days we will be able to get everyone fit and available for selection — the whole 31 training,’ he added.
‘That will be the first time we’ve had that out here which is really good and now it’s about creating momentum. When you look back at previous tournaments we have done well in there has been a performance that wasn’t the prettiest and that wasn’t the prettiest tonight, but we dug in.’
So now it is France in Oita on Sunday — who they have only lost to once since that 2011 semifinal when Sam Warburton was sent off.
‘In World Cups, when everyone writes them off, they seem to produce performances nobody expects,’ said Gatland. ‘We know how hard next week is going to be. They probably have a little advantage, not having had that game against England, so they might be a little bit fresher than we will be. But from our point of view we feel battle-hardened having come through four games.
‘ It’s not about unfinished business, it’s about taking our opportunities. These opportunities can change people’s lives.’