Shattered Halfpenny still makes his mark

LEIGH Halfpenny proved that even after nine months away from the international stage he still has plenty to offer, although he might ask for a little bit more preparation time ahead of his 83rd outing for Wales.

The Scarlets full-back was among 31 players on duty for the return game against England, although Warren Gatland revealed he had been forced to train in the morning before arriving at Principality Stadium.

So when Liam Williams pulled out of the warm-up with a tight hamstring less than an hour before kickoff, no one was more surprised than Halfpenny to be told he was starting.

“It was pretty tough on Leigh because he’d done a really tough training session yesterday and he had one this morning as well,” explained Gatland.

“Then we threw him in before kick-off. He’s absolutely shattered and he said his legs were killing him before that last kick.”

Halfpenny missed out on the 2015 World Cup when he ruptured his knee in the final warm-up match and was laid low with concussion in his last Test outing against the Wallabies on November 10, 2018. Now it’s a question of getting back up to speed.

Halfpenny said: “I felt for Liam picking up an injury just before the game. Hopefully, it's nothing serious.

“I’m not going to lie, we’d had a couple of tough train

ing sessions in the last couple of days, but when you get the call the adrenaline just kicks in.

“We had speed endurance training on Friday after the Captain’s Run and on the morning of the match I had leg weights followed by a watt bike session in the altitude room. The boys were coming out of the room in a pretty bad way and, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t walking too well.”

England hooker Jamie George, a second half replacement, reckoned there was plenty for Eddie Jones’ men to learn from their 13-6 defeat.

“I thought we learnt a huge amount from that, and once again the value of discipline. Potentially we were too frantic at times,” admitted George.

“It’s always a good sign that people are keen, but maybe we were a bit too desperate. But it’s better to learn that now than in Japan. We’re pretty happy with where we are at this point and we’re excited with where we can take things.”