BELTER FROM LIONS IN WAITING
WHAT a fabulous game of rugby — the Six Nations Championship at its very best — and I can guarantee you even Steve Hansen and his All Blacks will have clocked that belter at the Principality Stadium last night. I’m beginning to think the 2017 British and Irish Lions could be a very special team indeed.
What England demonstrated yet again is that if you don’t put them away when you are on top they will bite back with interest. Last summer in Australia they won Tests that they could and should have lost, last week at Twickenham they should have lost to France and again in Cardiff there were peri- ods when Wales seemed to be bossing the game.
The Welsh will be kicking themselves for not burying the ball into touch when they had the chance with three minutes left. George Ford ran it back and Elliot Daly did the rest with a very well-taken try, skinning Alex Cuthbert on the outside. I was slightly critical of him not getting the touchdown when perhaps he might have against France last week but he took this like a veteran.
Make no mistake, England earned the victory. They defended superbly for long periods and they turned up determined to ‘play’ which is not always easy to do in Cardiff. They were positive at all times, as were Wales, and the result was a game that crackled from start to finish. There were so many performances to enjoy.
Top of that list was an extraordinary man-of-the-match display from Joe Launchbury who is well and truly back to where he was before that serious neck injury. He was perpetual motion for 80 minutes — tackling, carrying, winning line-outs, stopping Wales at source. Don’t tell me modern-day professionals can’t operate for 80 minutes at full pelt. He was a machine.
As were Sam Warburton and Justin Tipuric, who were exceptional in tandem again. To play that well and be on the losing side must be truly gutting. Wales won the turnover duel 8-1 and much of that was down to them. As a unit the Wales back row won their battle with the England counterparts — Ross Moriarty was a force of nature before he went off — but the England breakaways did a lot of good things individually.
Nathan Hughes ran powerfully, Maro Itoje was immense in the close quarters and James Haskell was his usual boisterous self when he came on for Jack Clifford and gave England plenty of go-forward energy when they needed it late in the game.
These are the players England have available at present and the high tempo of the game didn’t suit them but they dug deep and found a way of keeping in the battle.
Jack Nowell was rock solid in defence and did wonders not to cough the ball up or concede a try in that Dan Biggar breakout in the first half, and then Daly showed his defensive qualities when he raced back after Biggar’s interception in the second half. Both could play international rugby at full-back and that is very useful indeed in a cauldron like the Principality Stadium.
England’s first-half try was well deserved, well-worked and showed great patience going through 26 phases. You could argue that they should have moved it wider sooner, and there was a bit of white-line fever going on, but there was a calmness about how they went about their work.
After that, though, they really came under the cosh, and when you look on games it is often the big defensive shifts which decide the outcome. England did well to concede just the one try before the break.
There are often key moments in a game and one came during that period when Alun Wyn Jones chose not to go for goal and opted for a scrum instead. England turned that scrum over but it was still the right call in my opinion because it was based on mood and emotion and keeping the momentum.
It stoked the Welsh fires further and ultimately, I would argue, it did result in that glorious score for Liam Williams. England didn’t clear the ball that well from the penalty they won turning over the scrum, Wales kept the pressure up and the play that Rhys Webb and Williams came up with — and mention also to a clever dummy run by Scott Williams — was a joy to watch and very hard to defend.
We need to keep an eye on Webb in
Even the All Blacks will sit up and take notice as England’s fighting spirit tames the Dragons in another Cardiff classic
terms of Lions selection. Most critics seem to have inked Conor Murray in, and the Irishman is playing superbly, but don’t discount Webb.
He is a clever player and has the pace and strength in the break to really make things happen. He’s confident and confrontational and it takes no stretch of the imagination to see him doing something special Down Under.
The second half was all Wales to start with but you always sensed that if that England defence — and credit to defence coach Paul Gustard here — could hold firm then England would come back late on because it is in this group’s DNA. They know no other way and Eddie Jones has tapped into that, or perhaps inspired it. Or perhaps a bit of both.
Finally a word for the referee, Jerome Garces, who I thought was outstanding.
It was a frenzied match of incredible intensity, but I felt there was a good attitude from the players. I noticed at one point Moriarty ‘got’ Owen Farrell with a marginal bone- shuddering late tackle but Farrell made nothing of it — in fact he just got up and smiled which was old school in the best sense.
There were a few marginal ‘hits’ — ever so slightly high, just a millisecond late — that might have attracted attention in a Premiership match but were absolutely OK in my book, nothing to get excited about.
The result was a great spectacle which leaves you waiting impatiently now for two weeks until the next round of the Six Nations.