Wales may be treating their first World Cup opponents Uruguay with the verbal deference they show to major opponents but, by admitting he already knows his team for the following weekend’s match against England and that the first half of this week’s training was focused on the tournament hosts, the head coach, Warren Gatland, clearly has bigger fish to fry.
Uruguay are made up largely of amateur players, including a flanker whose name is redolent of that bygone era in the game, Matias Beer, and their final warm-up match at the end of last month was a 40-0 defeat to Japan. It will be less a contest and more a question of whether Wales can better the 102 points they scored against Portugal in 1994 and improve on the 98-point victory they enjoyed over Japan in 2004, in what will be the start of a long three weeks for Los Teros.
Gatland, who is without three of his first-choice backs, has left out players such as Jamie Roberts, Alun Wyn Jones, Taulupe Faletau, George North, Dan Biggar and Gethin Jenkins from Sunday’s match day 23, keeping them back for England at Twickenham, and for some involved against Uruguay it may be their only taste of action in this tournament with Fiji and Australia to come.
“We have to go out on Sunday and win the game, then potentially score points,” said Gatland. “That is not disrespecting Uruguay in anyway, but with a six-day turnaround to England, we have to put our focus into the first two games. We have mixed and matched in training this week: some of the focus has been on England but it has been about Uruguay in the latter part.”
Asked if anyone would be playing for a place in the side at Twickenham he replied: “Not really.”
Two who will be playing for their spots are the full-back Liam Williams and the tighthead prop Samson Lee who will be making their first appearances since last season following surgery. The scrum-half Gareth Davies, who has been elevated from the bench following the ankle injury suffered by Rhys Webb at the start of the month, will be making his first international start.
The Wales captain, Sam Warburton, is one of the few leading players included in the starting lineup. “I desperately want to play in the opening match as it is in Cardiff which I have not played in on a World Cup stage, making it a rare opportunity,” he said. “It will be a proud moment for me. We have to be foot down for 80 minutes against Uruguay because no one knows what a good score against them is until they have played a few matches. You do not want to look back in a month and wish you had pushed a bit harder.”
Gatland said he did not feel it was an advantage to be playing Uruguay first in a group made up of three of the top five teams in the world rankings along with Fiji who, after making the 2007 quarter-finals at Wales’s expense, flopped in New Zealand four years later. “I wouldn’t mind having them last, but it is not something we are complaining about. It’s the card we have been dealt together with the short turnaround. We made the semi-finals four years ago and we have a more experienced group this time.”
Gatland has picked two opensides in his back row, Warburton and Justin Tipuric. If he said nothing should be read into it, the combination will be a means of countering Australia at the breakdown if they repeat their ploy against New Zealand in the Rugby Championship of playing their two breakaways, Michael Hooper and David Pocock,together.
“The debate at openside is one that people want to keep open,” said Gatland.
“I thought Sam was the man of the match against Italy two weeks ago, even though he was not awarded it. Had he been, it might have taken the pressure off us but we are in the great position of having two world-class players in the position. We took the decision this time to give a few other players a rest.”
It will be an unreal start for Wales in what it the most challenging pool in World Cup history. “It wouldn’t surprise me if there is an upset in the group,” said Warburton. “There’s some difficult turnarounds for some teams and Fiji are a different proposition from four years ago. It promises to be wide open.”
Like a lot of the field for the Welsh .
