Warren Gatland, the Welsh rugby coach, has said he does not expect to make many changes ahead of the Samoa match – seen by many as the potential banana skin of the Welsh pool – especially given our record against them. Twice we have met them in the World Cup, twice we have lost.
He has hinted that Gethin may get a start to give him some game time ahead of the knockout stages – which if I were Paul James would piss me off considering he has put in an impressive performance vs one of the most powerful packs in the World.
“I don’t think there will be a huge number of changes,”
We’ve got a couple of players coming back from injuries,” he said.
"Not making changes?.
We thought our scrum was excellent against South Africa
“But we know what a world class player Gethin is and it’s perhaps thinking how much game time do you try and give him before the quarter-final stage.
“He’s confident he will be available.”
Gatland admits his players are going to need to pick themselves up after a disappointing one point loss to South Africa, and suggests they need to be more clinical by kicking their penalties and landing their drop goals. A hint that Stephen Jones could be coming in perhaps?
“The stats in terms of territory and possession put us in a position that we were able to win the game, unfortunately we’ve lost by a point.
“But we’ve got to pick ourselves up from that and start thinking about Samoa and the latter stages of this tournament.
“We’ve got to build from last week. We started well in terms of good performance [although] not a good results for us.
“One of things that we have been able to demonstrate in the past is that we have been able to get better as a team as games and tours have gone on.
“We’ve got to make sure we get better this week in Hamilton on Sunday – kick your drop goal and kick your penalty.
“That’s how close the games are these days. That’s how tight things are.
“We’ve just got to make sure at the highest level you take every opportunity that’s presented to you.
“Unfortunately we had a couple of opportunities and we just didn’t quite nail them and we’ve got to continue to work on.”
What do you think? Should Gethin and Stephen come in, should Gatland wring the changes? Discuss this and more on our Welsh Rugby Forum. And don’t forget to hit ‘like’ on our Facebook page for more up to the minute news and opinion.
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