The message is the door is not shut, there are shirts up for grabs

WARREN Gatland has made 13 changes from the side that beat Fiji on Wednesday as Wales look to secure top spot in Pool D against Uruguay tomorrow (0915BST).

With a few injury concerns, there’s been some interesting problem solving for the Wales coach to get his head around – with Gatland opting for a 6-2 split on the bench.

Here’s everything he had to say after naming his team...

Question: How many of the changes were pre-planned and how did your plans change after Fiji? Warren Gatland: Probably in the forwards, we went to what we expected to do. Then it was a matter of waiting to see what happened in the Fiji game.

George North has a sore ankle that he took into that game so he’s been rested, we wanted to rest Liam Williams, Jonathan Davies had a knock on the knee and then Dan Biggar as well.

Two players have had to back up in Hadleigh Parkes and Josh Adams.

Ideally we’d have given Josh a rest, but that hasn’t been the case.

That’s why we’ve gone with a six-two split on the bench with the two nines covering.

Gareth went onto the wing against Fiji and did a good job. We have two quality nines (on the bench) and we can cover a number of positions. We can move guys around.

Q: Has it been a juggling act protecting some players with knocks and protecting some from potentially getting hurt? WG: It’s a bit of a juggling act with the four-day turnaround.

We knew from the start that we were going to expose a few players. We spoke before the World Cup about going into this game with one 10 anyway.

So we’ve been looking at cover there. It’s been hard with the short turnaround. We have a fresh forward pack and they’re excited and looking forward to the opportunity.

The message to the players against Uruguay is that the door is not shut.

There are opportunities for players to go out there and impress and stake a claim for a quarter-final spot. Q: How are Dan Biggar and Jonathan Davies in particular? WG: Dan’s symptom free, he’s being closely monitored by the medical team.

He was symptom free the next day, which was great.

Jonathan took a knock on the knee, he’s being monitored as well.

A few of the backs are sore and bruised from that physical encounter as you’d expect but apart from that, the forwards are in pretty good health, which is a positive.

Q: Is Jonathan looking OK for the quarter-finals?

WG: Hopefully, he’s being managed at the moment.

The knee was pretty good the next day. It had a bit of swelling and he’s been icing it regularly. He gets a little bit more time and hopefully that keeps improving over the next few days.

Q: You mentioned the cover at 10, will it be Hadleigh or Hallam? WG: You’ll just have to wait and see!

We’ve got options in terms of who can cover 10 and that will depend on how the game’s going. It could be one of the nines stepping in there as well. You can play 10 as well can’t you, Justin (Tipuric)?

We’ve got some options and that would depend on the game and we’ve got a few players we’d like to rest up and get off the field but that’s depending on our performance.

We’ve got to go out and start well. It’s Uruguay’s last game and they’ll want to finish on a high.

We need a good performance, particularly up front.

Q: Do you envisage having to make some unfamiliar switches with players out of position?

WG: We spoke about that on the weekend during the game. We could have put James Davies in the backs with his sevens experience.

Justin is comfortable in the wide channels. We’re confident that we have cover with players being able to move around if we need to.

We’ve got to make sure we do a job early on against Uruguay. It’s challenging with such a short turnaround but that’s what World Cups are all about.

We’ve spoken about creating as much strength in depth in the squad as we could over the last three or four years. The squad is in a good place mentally. There are a group of