‘I think it’s been brilliant for out about people who can
FORWARDS coach Jonathan Humphreys has been giving the latest news from the injury-ravaged Welsh camp ahead of Saturday’s game against Australia.
He’s also delivered his assessment on the autumn campaign so far.
Here’s what the former hooker had to say as he prepares for the Principality Stadium clash with the Wallabies.
Question: Can you give us the latest injury news? Jonathan Humphreys:
In regards to the two HIAs ( Will Rowlands and WillGriff John), they are following protocols, but it’s unlikely they are going to be right.
Tomas Francis is again following protocols. We are a bit more hopeful on that.
Hopefully Josh Adams is going to be right. It will probably be a last-minute clearance on that.
JH: Again, it’s going to be a late call. He’s made significant improvement so hopefully he’ll be involved at the weekend. Our week has been tailored to trying to get as much petrol in the tank as we can for the weekend. There has not been a lot of physical stuff so the call on him will be made later on in the week.
Q: So there are lots of question marks then? JH:
The whole campaign has sort of been like that. You can look at it and clearly we would have wanted more people available to us, but from my point of view it has turned out very similar to last autumn, where we found out a lot about people. There have been a lot of positives.
Ellis Jenkins coming back three years to the day really added to our strength in that area, where we were probably missing seven other people to that point. He’s been excellent.
Taine Basham has been a massive positive for us, and then you look at Rhys Carre, who has been very positive for us, and Ryan Elias. They are people who I believe have come through very strongly, and it has been really positive.
Q: What about the situation at tighthead prop now? JH:
All the way through this, there has been a lot of stuff there and that’s fine. It has made us work harder.
I thought Dillon Lewis was incredible at the weekend, going on and playing 75 minutes after he hadn’t trained all week because of some issues with both feet. For a tighthead to go 75 minutes while covering two bad feet was an incredible job for us. It just makes us go deeper, try and find solutions and you find out about people.