Wales rugby coach Warren Gatland pleased with ‘comfortable’ win over England

CARDIFF – Wales coach Warren Gatland predicted “something special” from his side ahead of their Rugby World Cup warm-up against England, and they delivered a commanding second-half performance to claim a 20-9 victory in Cardiff.

The New Zealander has seen his side struggle since he took over the reins for a second time in December 2022, and having selected an inexperienced match-day 23, he admitted he had some nerves.

“I was a little bit apprehensive this morning as I wasn’t quite sure how things were going to go. I know the players have been working hard and I was looking for a performance and it was a good start today,” he told Amazon Prime.

“(Winning) wasn’t important at all, it was the performance I was more interested in and I thought those guys out there gave us a performance, some really good individuals, and I thought the last 20 minutes we just looked comfortable.”

England led 9-6 at half-time but were denied more points despite numerous entries into the Wales 22, in part due to their own wastefulness in possession but also some excellent cover defence from Wales.

After the break, the home side began to impose themselves and scored 14 unanswered points following tries by Gareth Davies and George North.

“I thought (No. 8) Aaron Wainwright was excellent, (captain) Jac Morgan was excellent, I thought our two second rows were outstanding,” Gatland said.

“Scrums were a bit messy, we need a bit more clarification around that, and I thought young (fly half) Sam Costelow grew into the game and he’ll learn from that experience. One of the things about Test match rugby is you can’t coach experience.”

Gatland will be concerned by injuries for hooker Ryan Elias, lock Dafydd Jenkins and replacement loose forward Taine Plumtree.

“They’ll be scanned on Monday. Ryan looks like a slight hamstring tear but hopefully it’s not too serious,” the coach said.

“Daf, we’re hoping isn’t too serious a knee injury. Taine rolled his ankle and we wanted to get him off.”

Arguably, more England players harmed their World Cup chances in a lacklustre display featuring 22 turnovers and numerous handling errors than booked their place in a tournament squad due to be announced by coach Steve Borthwick on Monday.

“In the first half, we created lots of opportunities, we turned over too much ball in the opposition 22, we can’t do that in Test rugby,” he said. “Immediately, there are some areas for improvement, but the positives were how many entries we got into the opposition’s scoring zone.”

While some England players failed their auditions, South Africa coach Jacques Nienaber faces a difficult few days as he finalises his 33-man squad, after admitting that several fringe players put themselves in contention for selection ahead of Tuesday’s announcement.

Constant chopping and changing has been a feature of Springbok sides this season as he cast his net wide.

This was again evident in the 24-13 win over Argentina in Buenos Aires on Saturday, when they fielded almost an entirely new team from the one which beat the Pumas in Johannesburg the week before.

He said: “We have given 38 players the opportunity to play (in four games) and it is going to be a very difficult squad selection meeting. Many guys put their hands up over the last few weeks.”

In other Tests, world No. 1 Ireland overpowered Italy 33-17 and Scotland beat a second-string France 25-21. REUTERS, AFP