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Carre (9'), Adams (18')
Tries
Steyn (13'), Russell (53'), Graham (57'), Turner (74')
Costelow (9', 19')
Conversions
Russell (54', 58', 74')
Costelow (30', 47'), Evans (57')
Penalties
Wales’ performance on Saturday was easily their best so far under Steve Tandy. The stayed in the contest for the full 80 minutes (leading most of it) and every single player stood up to the mark and made themselves accountable. A low bar? Yes, but cleared in style.
Picking star players is, for a change, easy: fly-half Sam Costelow made a fool out of his many, many detractors, Aaron Wainwright is probably the best 8th man in the whole championship whilst Rhys Carre and Dewi Lake both carried excellently - as did Eddie James, who now has the best post contact metres of any player in the competition by a whopping 0.6m.
Elsewhere, Jenkins and Carter showed they are Wales’ 2nd rows for the foreseeable (22 tackles each is a phenomenal effort and the lineout was the best it has been in 12 months) whilst James Botham and Alex Mann gave the Scots a real battle at the breakdown.
And yet, we must temper our excitement. As good as it was to see Wales give 70,000 fans something to shout about again, everything is far from fixed. For instance, whilst Wales’ defence was better than it has been and the tackles showed tremendous heart, the fact is they are still being cut open far too easily.
If we were to take a football analogy, Wales have been playing until now with an open goal. In this game, they had a world class keeper, but still allowed their opposition so many shots that a few of them going in was inevitable.
Finn Russell had a field day picking off dog-legged and disconnected defenders. Wales badly struggled to cope with the variety of his play and the directness of Sione Tuipulotu.
In the first half, superb individual interventions from the likes of Plumtree, Jenkins and Adams saved the day. However, with the systemic issues still present, those heroics were never going to last all game. Too often Wales are still finding themselves with a disconnected midfield or with tight 5 forwards defending on the wing against some of the most dangerous runners in the game. It’s easy pickings for the likes of Russell and he will feel his teammates should have finished more of what he put on their plates.
If Wales had hung onto the win, it would have been a poor team playing right at their very maximum beating a good team at their very minimum. Morale boosting? absolutely, in fact it would have been the happiest Welsh rugby has been in years, but the problems would not have been solved.
Now let us consider the next question: selection. We can probably all agree that Steve Tandy and Matt Sherratt got their selections right for this game, perhaps with the exception of Hamer-Webb over Ellis Mee. All this serves to prove, though, is that they have been getting it wrong up until now.
Furthermore, was getting it right the result of planning, or did they stumble upon it by accident? We never really got to see if the Plumtree/Mann flank combination worked as selected thanks to Plumtree’s early injury, but we already knew Botham/Mann worked thanks to them playing together at Cardiff.
Anyone who has watched Ben Carter play for the Dragons knew he offered more than Adam Beard and the stats proved the lineout would not suffer, but Tandy continued to buy into the factually incorrect claims about Beard’s value until the player put in a performance so bad it forced the coach into dropping him.
Then there’s the fly-half. Since coming in, Tandy has made a concerted effort to keep is starting team as stable as possible and has picked the team’s spine accordingly. In this context, giving Dan Edwards a run at the Wales 10 jersey was the right thing to do; he scored the winning try for Wales as they broke their losing run away in Japan and had a couple of highlight reel moments in November. The public hype around him was through the roof, understandably so - a young fly-half bursting onto the scene and scoring match-winning tries is the stuff as dreams are made of.
However, as the games went by, it became apparent that the 10 being selected was not the ideal 10 for the Sherratt dual-playmaker game-plan. By the match against France, Edwards was becoming a spectator on the pitch as the system prevented him from showcasing his best attributes.
He was replaced by Sam Costelow for this game and suddenly everything about Wales’ attack operated much better, just as it had done when Jarrod Evans came on for the final quarter against France. Thus, it is shown that Tandy and Sherratt had backed the wrong horse.
The problem is that they should have seen it sooner. Stylistically, Edwards was never the right 10 for this system but there was ample data to show that Sam Costelow was, whether that be him playing with Wales’ 2 current first choice centres at club level or him effectively combing with Ben Thomas way back in the Gatland era.
Now, though, the coaches are in a quandary. Costelow’s injury means they have to make a decision again: recall Edwards or give Jarrod Evans a run in the shirt. Based on how things have gone so far, they have to opt for Evans, but this not only doubles down on them admitting their previous mistake but damages a young player’s confidence.
Meanwhile, the team still isn’t winning and a trip to Dublin up next is suddenly looking very daunting. If Wales have take a small step, Ireland have taken a giant leap. Therefore, the markers for success have not changed: stay in the fight, do the basics well, cause the opposition some problems. There were flickers of light against Scotland, but it is still too soon to call it a new dawn.
