George North is set to start for Wales in their final World Cup warm-up match, against Ireland in Dublin next Saturday, five months after he last played and two days before Warren Gatland names his 31 players for the tournament.
North suffered a third concussion in less than five months scoring a try for Northampton in the Premiership against Wasps at the end of March. After being told by a specialist not to play again last season he started full contract training two weeks ago, having completed all the protocols.
Wales were meant to be training in Poland this past week but their new consultant head of physical performance, Paul Stridgeon, decided after the July camp in Switzerland that the conditioning levels of the players were impressive enough to rule the stay in eastern Europe superfluous. Not that the squad had it easy at their training base in the Vale of Glamorgan. On Tuesday they trained with the regional side Ospreys, backs against backs and forwards against forwards, before the session ended with a simulated match.
North took part and is ready to win his 50th Wales cap at the age of 23. Having played in three Tests for the Lions, he became the youngest player to reach a half-century during the Six Nations and his fitness is key for Wales given that they have lost the Lions centre Jonathan Davies through injury while the wing Liam Williams has yet to train fully this summer following a foot operation.
Gatland has yet to decide whether to split his squad between 18 forwards and 13 backs or opt for 17-14. The head coach will not follow their group rivals Australia, who, on Friday, announced a 31-strong squad that contained two hookers and five props. He is more likely to name nine front-rowers, based on the tighthead Samson Lee recovering from an achilles tendon operation.
Gatland believes Lee, who has taken part in scrummaging sessions this month, will be fit to play in the group stage, which ends against the Wallabies at Twickenham. After jettisoning the veteran tighthead Adam Jones from the squad last season, Wales need Lee to be available.
They struggled up front against Ireland in Cardiff two weeks ago and the starting loosehead, Nicky Smith, was dropped from the squad at the end of the following week. Exeter’s Tomas Francis is likely to play at tighthead in Dublin, seven months after being first called up, having qualified through a grandmother who was born in Abercrave.
When Francis joined the World Cup training squad he weighed 21st 4lb. Working at altitude in Switzerland and then in the heat of Qatar under the gaze of Stridgeon has helped him shed a stone without sacrificing his power at the scrum, where he forged his reputation last season.
Two years ago, after his successful 2013 Lions tour to Australia, Gatland talked about the strong core of experience he had, both in terms of players who had taken part in the 2011 World Cup and those whose involvement in the international game stretched back well into the previous decade. He hoped players such as Adam Jones, Mike Phillips and Richard Hibbard could be nursed through to this year’s tournament, when they would all be in their thirties, but the moment Gatland realised he would be picking them on reputation and past success rather than current form, he dropped them. The result is a squad lighter on experience than seemed likely even a year ago, but in that time the hooker Scott Baldwin and the backs Lee and Liam Williams have proved themselves at the highest level.
The back-rower Ross Moriarty impressed on his first international appearance against Ireland, giving Gatland the extra ball-carrying option and aggression he had spent the decade looking for and Francis will be the next to have an opportunity. Given that there is still some doubt about how much of the World Cup Lee will be available for, Francis’s performance will be closely monitored.
Wales’s second pool match is against England at Twickenham. The outcome of the last three matches between the sides has been heavily influenced by the scrum. In 2013 at the Millennium Stadium Steve Walsh penalised England nine times at the set piece, prompting their management to seek an explanation from World Rugby. The following year at Twickenham Wales fell on the wrong side of Romain Poite and Gethin Jenkins was sent to the sin-bin for consistently not scrummaging straight. It was Wales’s turn to pick up the phone to the game’s governing body.
Last February in Cardiff Jérôme Garcès also took exception to Jenkins’s scrummaging technique but did not resort to the yellow card. The Frenchman is in charge of the group match between the sides and if Wales have not voiced any public concern, they will not waste the opportunity to speak to him before he takes charge of their final warm-up match against Italy, in Cardiff, on 5 September.
Wales have the option of the experienced Paul James at tighthead but, with Adam Jones and Hibbard no longer in the squad, the experience of Jenkins, who has played in three World Cups, together with his ability in the loose where he is like an extra flanker at the breakdown, will make Gatland reluctant to leave him out. There may be far fewer scrums in the modern game but the set piece has not lost its significance.
