Wyn Jones fires stern warning to England
ALUN Wyn Jones warned England there’s still more to come from Wales after Warren Gatland’s side put on a swashbuckling display to thrash Scotland in their Six Nations opener.
Wales put their opponents to the sword in Cardiff to score four tries in a 34-7 bonus-point success.
Leigh Halfpenny crossed in either half after Gareth Davies opened the scoring and Steffan Evans made it a day to remember for Gatland seven minutes from time as Scotland were blown away.
Next up for Wales is a trip to Twickenham on Saturday. And captain Jones said:
“This is just the start. Everyone wants to start with a win and we’ve got that now. It wasn’t the complete performance by any stretch.
“The early tries we scored added pressure because when you have a lead, you don’t want to lose it and we were conscious not to sit on it. We went a bit attritional after the first 25 minutes, but we stuck to our processes and we’re disappointed to leave some tries out there.
“Now we’ve got another big week coming up and a trip to Twickenham to look forward to.”
Wales started with a bang and were 14-0 up
inside as many minutes.
Davies intercepted opposite number Ali Price’s pass to race 60 metres and score before Halfpenny dived over for his first Wales try in five years. The full-back converted both efforts.
After the break two quick penalties from Halfpenny ended the game as a contest and the Scarlets ace – one of 10 men from Llanelli to start this game for Wales – then added his second try.
Evans completed the scoring and Halfpenny ended with a perfect kicking record. All of Wales’ points came from Scarlets players.
Head coach Gatland said: “It was an afternoon I was expecting with the way we have trained. There was definitely a quiet confidence in the squad and I told the chief executive I thought we would win by 20 points at the team run. He was shocked, but that’s how well we’ve trained.
“I said a few weeks ago the draw was great for us. Getting off to a winning start is important and we’re happy to get a bonus-point. Now we go to a venue where we’ve had a lot of success in the last ten years and we’re looking forward to it.”
Wales hooker Ken Owens said: “We’ve been criticised for not scoring tries and not creating enough opportunities, but we delivered that here.”
Scotland were woeful and Gregor Townsend admitted his team hadn’t been good enough as they remain without a win in Cardiff since 2002.
The Scotland head coach said: “That was miles below what we know we are capable of and where we need to be at in this Championship. We should be criticised for this performance, but now we have an opportunity to put things right.
“We have four games left to be much, much better than we were here. I believe in the players and their determination to make things right.”
Scotland host France on Sunday and their captain John Barclay said: “We didn’t start well, we didn’t look after the ball, and our line-out creaked.
“Wales scored some good tries, but we didn’t perform anywhere near the level we did in the autumn. We have four more games and now we have to react.”