I’ve purposefully waited a little bit longer than usual to post about this game because there was a lot of emotion tied up in it and I wasn’t quite sure what I felt. With a bit of distance it’s time to look back. From the context of the record breaking autumn series, Wales were terrible in the first half. The weather was a factor but it certainly didn’t bother the French who only had a single handling error compared to 10 from the Welsh. That kind of inaccuracy just stifles any kind of momentum and continually gives possession over to the French, who played the best rugby I’ve seen them play in a long time.
At half time the score was 16-0 to France, deservedly so. The game seemed to turn at half time with France handing Wales two tries from horrendous mistakes. One was from Huget failing to touch the ball down behind his own try line allowing North to dive on it, the second from three absurdly bad French passes leading to a North interception try.
Wales benefitted hugely from Dan Biggar coming into the game. It wasn’t the kind of game for Anscombe and his kicking out of hand was not effective enough to not be punished by the return kick from Lopez. Biggar is far stronger in the air, is better at the territorial game and a bit more strategic in moving the pieces around him, he’s also a more solid defensive option.
There’s little point at this stage in criticising the “long and on” kicking strategy of Wales. I can see the logic of keeping the tempo high to tire out the huge French forwards, but lets just say the execution needs to be better. It happened on so many occasions where France would gain the ball and punish Wales harder and gain more ground than where the kick was taken, which is so frustrating to watch.
What did infuriate me however, was the decision to kick long at the end of the game allowing France a chance to come back at Wales. All they had to do was tap, take one ruck and then kick the ball out. Keep control of the game in that circumstance, if you have the ball then the other team can’t score. Look at it this way, to complete a ruck and a kick has a lot less risk than a long kick allowing a French counterattack.
I think as a whole rugby needs to deal with the period of the game that occurs between the 10m lines, it seems like it’s too much of a risk to play there because too many kickers have 50m range these days, so the only tactic appears to be the up-and-under. This just boils down to “Well, we don’t know what to do here, so let’s kick it and see if we catch it 10m further down the field where things will be different.” I think this is an area for some innovation.
The bottom line is Wales won, they’ve won 10 games in a row, and in the past this would have been another addition to the “Wales left themselves too much to do after a bad start” list of games. It’s also true that Wales improve over the course of the Six Nations, so I expect a lot of improvements in accuracy and handling. As a Welsh rugby fan I should be happier that Wales won badly, having watched so many games of them losing well.
Looking forward I expect Wales to beat Italy, quite convincingly, Wales are simply too strong and I can’t see a win condition for Italy outside of Welsh mistakes. Italy have never managed to address the final quarter weakness in their game, I don’t have any stats to hand but from my impressions a vast amount of Italian points conceded would be in the last 20 minutes
CodexCaster's Contribution 