The Case For The Defence

I am not a fan of Warren Gatland as a coach but the evidence seems to suggest that I am wrong on this particular score. I have just watched the Welsh XV extinguish Ireland's slim hopes of the championship and, much more importantly for Welsh tastes I am sure, made the impending Calcutta Cup clash a competitive irrelevance.

Good luck to Wales - a Grand Slam achieved without the elegant excellence of Taulupe Faletau suggests they have finally become the sum at least of their considerable parts. Ireland, so recently the conquerors of the All Blacks have gone in the opposite direction. In their two genuinely challenging fixtures they have not laid a glove on England or Wales.

Onward to a World Cup to which Wales will bring their strange mixture of wild anticipation and morose melancholy (please don't let me hear again the pathetic lament of 'As long as we beat the English') and England will bear a press fuelled optimism and will be watched by a population which does not know its rugby arse from its rugby elbow.

Note to self - I do now understand what the fuss is about when the Welsh talk of Alun Wyn Jones. as for the title of this entry, well hats off to Shaun Edwards and the defensive machinery that locked out the Irish.

The warrior class