Thoughts on Wales selection for next weekend?

First topic message reminder :

Rather an exciting culmination of events, a turn of form post first fifty minutes of this championship, a resurgent Italy and suddenly retaining our title as champs not chumps looks possible, maybe even likely ???

Injury wise Ryan Jones is a huge concern he has been talismanic ths year, though as a replacement skipper and flanker Warburton has proved to the public form is temporary but class is a permenent gift.

So, front row looks to be fine, I am not sure whether Geth has recovered but James had a good game it would be hard to swap him out...

AWJ proved his selection, he was immense Coombs will have to stay on the bench.

Backrow, I am kinda keen to see tips and warbs combo... Though if Ryan is able to play I would keep this weekends starting backrow. Other option might be Shingler in for Ryan.

Backline went well, no need for change there, though options are always worth discussion.

You guys think Coombs can cut it at blindside?

I do but I think Shingler or Tips will come in

Interesting call for King to come in at 6

I agree, King is definitely playing lock much more than backrow. But of a bizarre call to move him back to six ahead of form players like Shingler...?

dragonbreath wrote:If we want to win we have to exploit Englands defensive weaknesess and they are out wide not down the middle. If that means we have to miss out Roberts to get it wide then just do it.

Couldn't agree more. From first phase, we should use Roberts or North / Cuthbert as decoys and go wide. The whole phase play thing is intended to manufacture a defensive mismatch, like a wing up against a prop, but if you know the opposition wings aren't great defenders, then surely you want your big wingers running at them full pelt. No need to manufacture anything. Screw this 'earn the right' lark, hit them where they're weak.

Tipuric + Warburton would create a bigger cosmic explosion than when North left Krypton.

I heard George North out bench pressed a JCB this morning...!

Would have picked Tips, Warbs and Jones in the back-row, but with Jonesy out I've gone for something that I think we'll need to handle the physicality.

Halfpenny, North, Davies, Williams, Cuthbert, Biggar, Phillips, Faletau, Warburton, Coombes, AWJ(c), Evans, Jones, Hibbard, James.

Is Jenkins going to come back to the 23?

RubyGuby wrote:I do but I think Shingler or Tips will come in

Interesting call for King to come in at 6

I'd stay with Coombes, with King to be added to the 23. I think Shingler was awful against Ireland and has played himself way out of contention. He doesn't hit the tackles and rucks hard enough to be of any value. He isn't a big carrier these days either. He could do with adding some muscle mass then he could be Tom Wood V2.

Morg I agree but i have been massively impressed with him when released to Scarlets since the ireland match. Looks good enough to give a chance too

Can anybody seriously explain to me what is so different between 6&7 that our 2 best flankers can't be started on the same field at the same time. Tips and warbs are the best we have in the absence of ryan, head and shoulders above any others yet people are calling for shingler or coombes (who has been fantastic this tournament) to start instead. I think they'd work together really well, one choping them down.the other stealing the ball. Who cares if they both would occupy the same shirt, they're professionals!

doddie - its about getting the balance right and Coombs might offer more power and much needed grunt compared to the dynamism and subtlety of Warburton and Tips - Its an interesting call

Warburton and Tips has arguably been our best flanker combo this season.

By Steve James for The Telegraph - 12th Mar 2013


“Are you famous?” asks the bemused man standing at the bus stop outside a pub in Cardiff’s Cathedral Road. The man upon whom the camera is trained responds: “My name is Barry John. I used to play rugby.”

John did rather more than that. The former Wales fly-half was once the greatest rugby player on the planet.

He was called ‘The King’. And that was not a crown placed on his head by his doting countrymen, rather by the always-hard-to-please New Zealanders after John’s magic had guided the British and Irish Lions to victory there in 1971.

But John, overwhelmed by the baleful attention as rugby’s first pin-up star, left the game suddenly, retiring at the age of just 27. And nearly 41 years on a wonderful BBC Wales documentary has examined his life and times.

It was at once moving, enlightening and saddening. It evoked the latter emotion because John, separated from his wife, now cuts a rather lonely figure, with a fondness for the pub.

But it is also a reminder of how good a player John was. To watch defenders grasping at thin air as the insouciant John glided past was to witness a preternatural talent.

There was trickery in his hands, hips and feet. He was rugby’s dancer. As Max Boyce, the famous Welsh entertainer, says with typical imagery: “He could run through a field of corn and only the corn would know which way he went.” Given the abysmal lack of skill shown in all three Six Nations matches last weekend, the black and white images of John truly warmed the heart.

Gareth Edwards tells a well-known story of his first meeting with John. The great scrum-half wanted to acquaint himself better with his new partner so he ventured to Trinity College, Carmarthen, to find him. That took some time as John was hungover and then could not find his rugby boots. But eventually they went to the college playing fields where John, wearing plimsolls, said to Edwards: “You chuck it and I’ll catch it.” And that is what they did.

John was a slender man even in a slenderer era, and the unavoidable, if odious, question to ponder is how John might have fared in today’s game. He certainly would have had to sharpen up on his tackling. He never enjoyed that part of the game, but then not many flyhalves did until relatively recently.

And he would have had to shelve much spontaneity to play more to a plan. For that is what today’s flyhalves must do. Rugby is muscular chess, and it is the flyhalves who make the moves.

Asked recently to identify the most important player on a rugby field, Worcester director of rugby Richard Hill immediately pinpointed the fly-half. “He is the one who will transfer what you have done on the training pitch into the game,” he said.

“If your 10 decides to do something completely different, then you see a very different game. He has to run the show.” Mavericks need not apply. Instinct is often mistrusted. It is why James Hook has not been entrusted with the Wales No 10 jersey as often as many misty-eyed romantics would like. Only last Sunday in his newspaper column John said “it makes me sad” that Hook is not used more.

A personal view is that John might have been a footballer these days rather than a rugby player. It was a game he loved as a child and it may have better suited his physique.

And his kicking, both out of hand and to the posts, was always underrated. At the start of his career he did not kick goals. At that time fullbacks mainly did the kicking, with toe-punts off a straight run-up.

Then kicking from around the corner with one’s instep became fashionable, and that was John’s style. He also dropped goals for fun.

And, as England travel to Cardiff for a Six Nations decider and possible Grand Slam this week, it is worth recording that he also never lost to England (even if it was only five matches – JPR Williams played in 11 without losing!).

“One of the small things I treasure!” John wrote in the autobiography written immediately after retirement that professionalised him and forever precluded a comeback. The game may have changed considerably, but the burning passion for a Welshman to beat England at rugby never will.

It should be some week.

By Graham Clutton for The Telegraph 12 Mar 2013



Sam Warburton is being made to sweat over whether he will lead Wales against England on Saturday.

The interim Wales coach, Rob Howley, has been forced into a change of both personnel and leader after captain Ryan Jones was on Tuesday ruled out of the Six Nations game in Cardiff with a broken bone in his shoulder.

The Ospreys back row forward was handed the captaincy for the second game of the championship, against France, after Warburton was ruled out with a shoulder problem.

He retained the armband when the Cardiff Blues’ openside returned against Scotland last weekend and was told that barring injury or a chronic loss of form, he would lead Wales into this weekend’s finale at the Millennium Stadium.

Howley’s worst fears were realised in the second half at Murrayfield when Jones was led off the field with what appears to be a season-ending injury.

Blindside trio Aaron Shingler, James King and Andrew Coombs, as well as Ospreys’ openside Justin Tipuric, are the players vying to fill the void left by Jones while Warburton, Alun Wyn Jones and Gethin Jenkins are the candidates who will be considered as captain.

Wales are not due to make their team and captain public until Thursday and Warburton was on Tuesday night still waiting to be told whether it would be him.

It is understood that Warburton, who still harbours hopes of leading the British and Irish Lions in Australia this summer, will be consulted prior to any decision but forwards coach Robin McBryde was not prepared to say more on Tuesday than that the position was up for discussion.

McBryde said: “There are quite a few sore bodies after the weekend, and we are not under any pressure to make any decisions at the moment.”

If Wales win by more than seven points they will be assured of the championship crown.

Hooker Richard Hibbard said: “I would like to win the championship, there would be no nicer way to finish the season. So, personally, if we are winning by one or two points late on and we do get a chance to score a try, we will go for it.

“Looking back at the Italy game, we were comfortable and at the end we just kicked it out of play when the time was up and in hindsight it would have been better for go for the points. So, that is our mentality, if we are attacking we want to score points.”

maestegmafia wrote:By Graham Clutton for The Telegraph 12 Mar 2013

Hooker Richard Hibbard said: “Looking back at the Italy game, we were comfortable and at the end we just kicked it out of play when the time was up and in hindsight it would have been better for go for the points.”

It was shocking then and it's shocking now!

Luckless Pedestrian wrote:

maestegmafia wrote:By Graham Clutton for The Telegraph 12 Mar 2013

Hooker Richard Hibbard said: “Looking back at the Italy game, we were comfortable and at the end we just kicked it out of play when the time was up and in hindsight it would have been better for go for the points.”

It was shocking then and it's shocking now!

And that was the maverick James Hook

Luckless Pedestrian wrote:

maestegmafia wrote:By Graham Clutton for The Telegraph 12 Mar 2013

Hooker Richard Hibbard said: “Looking back at the Italy game, we were comfortable and at the end we just kicked it out of play when the time was up and in hindsight it would have been better for go for the points.”

It was shocking then and it's shocking now!

I hadn't even thought of that. Very annoying if we only win by four to six points. Obviously if Hibbard has mentioned it, it's been brought up though. Perhaps that's why Hook wasn't used in the last game (if I recall correctly?)

The conditions in Italy were dreadful and we would have been just as likely to concede a try as opposed to have scored one.

Then we might as well not play at all.

Welcome to the Pleasure Dome Glas

The conditions were horrible in Rome and to be fair I am sure those guys and girls in the front ten rows were very keen to get out of the stadium and get a Vino Brule to warm the cockles.

They guys could and maybe should have pushed harder in all three games in hindsight.

I wouldn't knock them though, I'd rather praise them all for turning it all around after the first fifty minutes of the first match.

Well done Wales.