When Warren Gatland spoke before the start of last autumn’s international campaign and said his focus was on the World Cup, not what lay ahead that season, he received an incredulous reaction. The Wales head coach said that a training regime had been devised that would ensure the players would be at their physical peak come the middle of September, not any time before, and, if that meant missing out on a trophy, so be it.
What he meant is clear now, even if he has had to rip up a few plans in recent weeks to compensate for a rising injury toll: Wales have remained in control of their destiny throughout the pool stage, having had the edge over England at Twickenham last weekend both mentally and physically. Injuries have not made them weaker, something that has not been said about Wales for decades.
Part of Gatland’s plan last autumn was to prepare his squad for a tournament that would largely be fought on foreign fields. Two of their group matches were at the Millennium Stadium – Uruguay and Fiji – but England and Australia were at Twickenham, as would be all their knockout matches if they qualified for those stages. Home comforts could not be relied on, nor the roar of the crowd.
Playing away demands even more than appearing in front of one’s own crowd. If the expectation is reduced, so more of the game is played on the back foot and it was Wales’s ability to remain in touch with England during the parts of last Saturday’s match when they were being outplayed that allowed them to deliver the telling blows at the end.
That victory completed a remarkable sequence on the road this year for Gatland’s side: they have won at every one of the grounds of their Six Nations rivals: Edinburgh, Paris and Rome during the Six Nations, Dublin last month and Twickenham last weekend. Their last defeat away from Cardiff came against South Africa in June last year, and that was by a single point in the penultimate minute after they had led for the previous 78. Maintaining the knack of winning away will be the key to how far they can progress at this World Cup.
When the England squad rose on the morning of the game against Australia, Wales were packing their bags at their training base in the Vale of Glamorgan for the move to a hotel a few miles from Twickenham to prepare for their final group match against the Wallabies on Saturday. After England’s elimination, that match will now settle who wins Pool A.
Neil Jenkins, the Wales kicking coach, says: “Our goal from the outset has been to finish at the top of the group and as soon as we had beaten Fiji on Thursday we knew that was still within our grasp. We were always going to watch the match between England and Australia as a group and with interest but its outcome was never going to change the way we prepared for our game against the Wallabies. It was always going to be a match we had to win to clinch first place in a formidably difficult pool and give us the best chance of progressing as far as we can in the tournament.” That is, avoiding New Zealand on the path to the final.
Wales have not beaten Australia since 2008 and the one blot on Gatland’s record is their lack of success against the major southern hemisphere nations, although one notable home feat in the last year was November’s 12-6 victory over South Africa at the Millennium Stadium. A team that had made a habit of blowing games against the Wallabies, the Springboks and the All Blacks in the final 10 minutes hung on for a significant victory, one they will be recalling this week as they prepare for Saturday.
“Our recent record against Australia is not impressive in terms of results but some of the performances have not been reflected on the scoreboard and we have never lost to them at Twickenham,” Jenkins says. “They always have intuitive, intelligent rugby players, one reason they can keep going for the full 80 minutes.
“We know how difficult it will be but the players have been magnificent so far and I was really impressed with the attitude they showed against Fiji. I was more nervous before the game than I had been at Twickenham because it was a short turnaround after a huge victory when they gave everything and Fiji are a real handful, but the response was outstanding.”
Any satisfaction Gatland felt after Thursday’s win the New Zealander kept to himself, knowing the bigger battle was yet to come. Tellingly, when asked how he felt Dan Biggar, the outside-half who has emerged as one of the players of the tournament, had played after continuing his 100% goal-kicking record in the tournament, Gatland replied: “His kicking was good but his all-round play was not good.”
That terse response came from a head coach who knows how to keep the heads of his players the right size.
