Howley: We have got our pride back
ROB Howley reckons Wales “restored pride” with victory over Argentina in Cardiff.
Liam Williams and Gareth Davies both scored in the 24-20 victory as Wales ended their fivegame losing run. But just as important was putting to rest the debacle against Australia the previous week.
Howley said: “It has been a tough week so it’s important we celebrate a win.
“This game was all about putting some pride back in the jersey. I never question the attitude of the players.
“Last week’s first half was something we had never experienced before but the players rolled up their sleeves, had the right edge and deserve the accolades.
“It was good to beat a side above us in the rankings but more important to win at home because that’s where we want to improve our success rate.”
WALES discovered a winning escape from their pit of despair last night thanks in no small way to a player who began his working life as a scaffolder.
Liam Williams, conspicuous by his unavoidable absence from last week’s wretched capitulation to the Wallabies, answered the looming crisis by restoring public faith in the traditional Welsh virtue of making something out of nothing.
Had the pyrotechnics been fully rewarded, he would have walked off with a hat-trick of tries.
Liam the builder always brings a yes-he-can mentality. The one try he did get turned out to be just enough to lay the spectre of a sixth straight Welsh defeat to rest and spare interim head coach Rob Howley another troubled weekend after the nightmarish experience of watching his team fall to pieces against Australia.
Wales were always going to be better if only because they could not conceivably have been any worse. And while the win still left much to be desired, they played well enough for long enough to have got home with something more to spare than a measly four points.
Argentina, barely recognisable as the team that sprinkled the World Cup with so much Latin glitter, were still, somehow, in with a shout almost until the very end.
Wales had their luck, most notably when AlunWyn Jones avoided a yellow card for two offences which sparked a second-half Argybargy. His reaction at being told by the lenient Australian referee Angus Gardner that he was not being binned spoke volumes: “Thank you very much.’’
Just as Jones made a huge difference after missing the Australian shambles following his father’s death, so Sam Warburton, as expected of a breakdown specialist of his stature, made a similar difference.
In terms of their evolution from the outmoded ‘Warrenball’ to something more imaginative, Welsh readiness to reject multiple shots at goal to go for tries represented a step, however small, on a long road.
Had Howley really gone for broke, Liam Williams would have started at fullback, the optimum position for a player with an instinctive ability to deal in the unexpected.
Young fly-half Sam Davies’ removal from the squad strengthened the suspicion that Howley is unwilling to go too far too soon in the evolutionary business. Tactically, Wales have been one-dimensional for too long.
Having wasted no time conceding an early lead to the Wallabies seven days ago, Wales began by conceding an even earlier one yesterday. The sloppiest of passes from Alun-Wyn Jones began a chain of events which Wales could only stop at the expense of a ruck penalty.
Nicolas Sanchez made them pay, thereby starting where he had finished in the same stadium last year as the ringmaster of the Pumas’ exhilarating World Cup quarter-final victory against Ireland. Far from taking the hint, Wales responded by giving him a second shot barely five minutes after the first.
At least four Welsh players standing in front of Biggar’s up-and-under gave headless pursuit, a collective offence made even less excusable by the fact that the referee’s warning had fallen on deaf ears. Sanchez, perhaps unable to believe his luck, promptly disproved the theory that he never looks a gift horse in the mouth, missing from some 40 metres.
The faithful had arrived in a rare old state of anxiety after the previous week only to see their team crank up the tension with another unconvincing start. Having gone from bad to worse against Australia, Wales recovered rapidly to take charge via two Halfpenny penalties.
They would have had four more by half-time had Wales not opted for tries instead. They had every justification for exploiting the power of their lineout, the best maul taking Ken Owens close to the opening try.
Twice Biggar hoisted cross-kicks towards the left corner where the sight of a leaping Liam Williams reduced the Pumas to a state of desperation. But for a telescopic piece of ankle-tapping by the veteran Hernandez, the Scarlet flyer would have been in between the posts.
Somehow the South Americans kept their line intact although even they would be hard pushed to explain how, other than breaking the laws ad nauseum. Sanchez could thank his lucky stars at being the first beneficiary of Gardner’s aversion to using the sin-bin.
He allowed a few too many penalties to be given
before warning Augustin Creevy that the next offender would go. Gardner then proceeded to give the distinct impression that he had left his cards in the dressing-room.
When he belatedly brought the yellow into use and binned Ramiro Herrera a minute before half-time, Wales relished the prospect of squeezing a push-over try from the ensuing penalty scrum. Instead the substitute tighthead, Enrique Pieretto rescued the sevenman Pumas pack by lifting Jenkins off his feet and, more significantly, lifting the siege.
For the second week in a row, the half-time scoreboard told an improbable story. Just as Australia ought to have been out of sight the previous week, so Wales would have been at a loss to explain why they had nothing but a three-point lead to show for their marked superiority.
How fitting that when the overdue opening try eventually arrived, Liam Williams should score it.
Biggar’s break having almost created a try in the right corner, Wales used the full width of the pitch to score in the opposite corner. Long passes from Scott Williams and Halfpenny gave Williams enough room to prove the old adage that a good man can only be kept down for so long. His try, confirmed by the English TMO, Shaun Davey, took some finishing.
Far from smoothing Wales’ way towards a comaway fortable win, it had the simultaneous effect of turning the match upside down and inside out.
Having treated the Welsh 22 hitherto as an exclusion zone, the Pumas outwitted Wales for Hernandez, at 34 the oldest player on the field, to outstrip everyone in red to Martin Landajo’s grubber.
No sooner had Gareth Davies soothed Welsh apprehension by restoring the eight-point lead than his opposite number, Landajo, responded with a carboncopy opportunist try of his own.
It made for an unnecessarily tense finish, Sanchez pegging Wales back to within a point before Halfpenny applied the last word two minutes from time.