Gat aims for 14th time lucky vs Australia

WARREN Gatland insisted Wales can take on Australia in confident mood after watching his team win their opening match of an Autumn series for the first time since 2002.

Wales downed Scotland 21-10 with George North and Jonathan Davies scoring tries.

Next up for Wales is Australia at Principality Stadium on Saturday, a team they haven’t beaten since 2008. It’s 13 straight defeats to the Wallabies for Gatland’s men, but after seeing the way his team kept Scotland at arm’s length, the two-time Lions boss was in confident mood.

“We will be all the better for that,” Gatland said. “It’s not about getting the monkey off our back with Australia. There are games against them where we’ve been leading going into the final minutes and we’ve been unlucky at times. It would be nice to win next week.The more important

game will be when we play Australia at the World Cup. If I’m honest I think we’d have struggled if we’d come up against Australia instead of Scotland in the first game.

“But it’s a start for us even though we were a bit rusty at times. For long periods of the game we were very comfortable without the ball. Scotland put us under pressure in the second half, but we defended very well and there were lots of positives.

“Gareth Anscombe was good in attack. He gave a lovely pass for Jonathan to score. He attacked the line and put players into holes.”

Gatland witnessed North and Davies at their best and must have been heartened by it. North’s effort sent him into third place in Wales’ record try scorer list on 34.

Gatland also brushed off any concerns over Ken Owens after the Wales hooker suffered a nasty head-on-head collision with Ryan Wilson just before half time.

He appeared three minutes into the second half, was later replaced by Elliot Dee, and then came back on when Dee was yellow carded. “Ken is fine,” said Gatland.

“He has taken a knock on the nose, which was a bleed, and he had a HIA as a precaution. He passed that and had one after the game as well.

“Just because you get a knock to the face, it doesn’t mean you’re concussed. Concern is understandable and the welfare of the player is the most important thing. It was precautionary to give him a HIA because there was some blood. It wasn’t a concussion, it was a whack on the nose.”

Wales captain Alun Wyn Jones lifted the first Doddie Weir Cup.

He said: “It will be interesting to look back at the game in terms of territory and possession and see what we didn’t convert. We had a good two weeks together and there was a lot of character which came to the fore. We need to keep the ball a bit longer in attack, but it's good to see our players firing.

Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend said: “The tries Wales scored were our defensive errors. We didn’t start with the energy and the accuracy required in a game like this.”