Wales used to be the masters of the drop goal. A method of scoring that has become an endangered species accounted for more than one quarter of Barry John’s points tally for his country. In one club match for Cardiff, when two of Llanelli’s back-row forwards were his brothers who had threatened all sorts if they got hold of him, the game’s greatest fly-half barely made a break or passed all match, but his four drop kicks delivered a 12-9 victory.
Before Sunday’s effective group decider against Australia, it had been 35 internationals since Wales had scored with a drop goal. It was through necessity then, the fly-half Sam Davies winning the 2016 game against Japan in Cardiff with three points seconds from full time, but here it was a tactic that won a game in which Wales were outscored by three tries to two.
Dan Biggar’s drop goal after 36 seconds, the quickest in the history of the World Cup, and another by his replacement Rhys Patchell three minutes into the second half, proved the difference between the sides in a fixture that has invariably this decade been decided by a few points. Until last November’s 9-6 victory in Cardiff, they had lost 13 matches in a row to the Wallabies, several in the final minutes.
• Fixtures, tables and results
• Our latest minute-by-minute live reports
• Sign up to The Breakdown, our free rugby union email newsletter
Team guides
Pool A: Ireland, Japan, Russia, Samoa, Scotland
Pool B: Canada, Italy, Namibia, New Zealand, South Africa
Pool C: Argentina, England, France, Tonga, USA
Pool D: Australia, Fiji, Georgia, Uruguay, Wales
They absorbed two key details which they used to telling effect in delivering their first victory over a major southern hemisphere nation in the group or knockout stage of a World Cup: they turned pressure into points and held their nerve in the closing minutes so that when Australia sought to make their greater composure and technique tell, it was Wales who were making the right decisions.
The Wallabies became gripped by despair – eventually blundering their way to a defeat that leaves them probably needing to beat England and New Zealand to reach the final.
Wales’s ascent to the top looks less steep. With Fiji and Uruguay to come, they are on course to finish at the top of a World Cup pool for the third time: the other two occasions, in 1987 and 1999, did not include a tier one nation from the south and 20 years ago, when they were hosts, they were not inconvenienced by one from the north. The significance of a victory that leaves them with a potential quarter-final against France is that it was the first of its kind on this stage.
After Ireland’s defeat to Japan the previous day, Joe Schmidt was described as being a “zombie coach” because he is standing down at the end of the tournament, a factor perceived to be behind his side’s lack of an edge against the hosts.
Warren Gatland is in his final weeks in charge of Wales, but every time the camera focused on the box he and his fellow management team were closeted in, the animation on their faces reflecting the desire, drive and determination shown by the players as Australia fought back in the second half.
It matters to Schmidt every bit as much as it does to Gatland but it is Wales, for so long a World Cup laughing stock, beaten by (Western) Samoa in 1991 and 1999 and Fiji eight years later, a period when they qualified for the last eight in only two tournaments in five, this was redemption. It did not take Gatland long to crack Europe – a mere couple of months – but the south took a little longer, some 10 years.
Winston Churchill, rather than one of his admirers, may have been prime minister when Wales last defeated New Zealand, but South Africa have been mastered in the last four years and now Australia. What was notable about this victory was that when he started planning for the pool two years ago, Gatland would have been counting on the likes of Sam Warburton, Taulupe Faletau and Rhys Webb, Lions all, to help him break new ground.
They were all elsewhere but barely missed. Aaron Wainwright was involved in everything until his legs gave out from the effort, Josh Navidi helped thwart Australia’s threat at the breakdown and, at scrum-half, Gareth Davies scored one of his side’s two tries with a trademark interception and his scampering, hurry-up style allowed Wales to play with tempo and width in the opening half when they built up a 15-point lead.
Another Gareth Davies, who played for Cardiff, Wales and the Lions in the 1970s and 1980s and is now the Welsh Rugby Union chairman, was one of the many drop-goal specialists Wales used to manufacture, but his namesake, in a position that not long ago looked to be one of Wales’s few areas of weakness because of the France-based Webb’s unavailability, dropped Australia in it and kept Wales on course for Gatland’s fitting finale.
