Wales are not playing particularly well – their 9-6 victory over Australia and the previous weekend’s success against Scotland came after two of the worst Test matches of modern times – but they have momentum with, just as the World Cup appears on the horizon.
Certainly, that has not previously been the case when applied to their fortunes in this fixture as this was Wales’s first win over Australia in 10 years and 14 attempts.
Wales coach Warren Gatland hits out at Samu Kerevi’s ‘reckless’ chargedown
Should they collect their eighth and ninth consecutive victories in their next two matches – against Tonga and South Africa – they would have shaken off another hex by winning all their autumn internationals for the first time.
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it,” said Warren Gatland, whose record as a coach gleams ever brighter as each tarnish, such as the losing run against Australia for example, is polished away. “The players really do believe they can have a good autumn, hopefully a successful Six Nations and then start to think about doing well in the World Cup.”
Wales will field a new team against Tonga on Saturday, which they will expect to win, before going full bore for South Africa. Perhaps Gatland’s greatest source of satisfaction is the calibre of player he can summon for that supposedly lesser fixture.
Against Australia on Saturday, Dan Biggar and Liam Williams were restricted to the bench, which Gatland described as the strongest he has fielded in his time with Wales. Other players missing, who may or may not be available for the climax of his tenure, the World Cup next autumn, included Taulupe Faletau, Jake Ball, Samson Lee and Rhys Webb.
Victory against Tonga would equal Wales’s longest winning streak of this century, the eight of Mike Ruddock’s team in 2004-05. Successes against South Africa and then France in Paris on 1 February in the opening Six Nations match would equal the run of 10 in 1999. And they would break their record for consecutive wins, the 11 of the early 20th century, if they were to beat Italy and then England in Cardiff.
Wales are ranked ahead of all of the above but we are getting ahead of ourselves. The margins in international rugby are particularly fine. Ask Australia, who, in contrast to Wales, are suffering from a lack of momentum. In no way could anyone argue they were outplayed in any department, even the lineout, a recent source of angst for the Wallabies. It was again but they also made a royal mess of Wales’s normally reliable lineout.
When a side are in the grip of a poor run – this was Australia’s 10th defeat from their past 13 Tests – the rot sets in. The decisions early in the second half, when they were as dominant as either side could have claimed to be throughout, to turn down kicks at goal twice in favour of the corner was bizarre, as Michael Hooper, their captain, acknowledged. The subsequent messes they made of the attacking lineouts were no more than symptomatic of a shockingly poor match, riddled with errors.
For all the talk of losing and winning runs, of psychological edges to be gained or lost before the World Cup, when Wales and Australia will meet in the pool stage, no one will be getting too carried away.
The archaic scoreline flattered a match, which was more deserving of the 3-3 result it seemed to be spluttering towards until a period of relative high jinks yielded three penalties in the last 15 minutes. Wales clinched victory with the third of them, kicked by Biggar with two minutes remaining .