Wales and Ireland have named unchanged teams for Friday night’s encounter at the Principality Stadium despite approaching the game from different directions. The home side are playing for a place in the top half of the table after losing to Scotland in the last round, Wales’s first defeat to them in 10 years, while their opponents are contenders for the title having recovered from an opening–day defeat at Murrayfield to beat Italy and France.
Ireland need to win to set up a potential decider against England in Dublin in the final match of the tournament next week, and once their head coach, Joe Schmidt, realised in training this week that Jared Payne was not ready to return to the midfield, his selection task was straightforward.
It was different for his Wales counterpart, Rob Howley, after his side’s failure to score a point in the second half against Scotland resulted in them frittering their interval lead. He resisted any temptation to start Taulupe Faletau at No8, saying that the Bath forward had a short turnaround after playing against Wasps last Saturday, and talked about giving his players the chance to redeem themselves despite a run of four victories in their past 11 Tests, not that he was overloaded with alternatives with the uncapped players named in the squad in January yet to be blooded.
Wales have named an unchanged 23 for the first time since 1998, when Graham Henry was in charge. “It’s as beneficial for me as it is for Rob Howley to name an unchanged team,” said Schmidt. “Through the tournament it’s the first time we’ve been able to do that. When we won the title in 2014 and 2015 we actually had minimal changes week to week and we grew as the tournament went on, picking up more rhythm.”
Schmidt said Ireland would not be targeting George North, despite Wales saying earlier in the week that the Lions wing had been told to repair defensive deficiencies that proved costly in Scotland. He remains on the right wing, where he tends to see less of the ball than on his preferred left and suffers concentration lapses.
“If you’ve seen the size, the strength, the speed and the agility of such a big man, why would you go looking for George North?” said Schmidt. “I know it doesn’t leave you a lot of options, because Jonathan Davies and Scott Williams are no shrinking violets either, and Liam Williams was an absolute superstar against New Zealand. They have a number of threats across the board and I don’t think we’re wilfully going to go looking for North because we’ve seen him do incredibly well defensively.
“I think the human factor in any sporting occasion is unknown despite conditions potentially favouring one side or another, or one specific athlete or another. That’s why people love it, because there is that sense of the unknown. What could be a bad day one day for a player can quickly become a good one next time out. I do not think North had a shocking day by any means but he will be highly motivated, like the Wales team.”
Wales want the roof shut on Friday night, but it is down to Schmidt, who is minded to keep it open, like England’s Eddie Jones before him this year. “We are waiting for a formal request from Wales to make a decision,” he said. “We will probably decide when we get over there: if the weather is fine, there would not seem to be too much point in closing it as it can make the surface slippery.”
Wales said same again to a losing team for the first time since the 2012 tour to Australia. That was a series of near misses but having scored only three points in the second half against England and none in Scotland, there would now appear to be a case of something broken needing to be fixed. Howley does not see it that way.
“We had a dominant first half in Scotland on the back of one of the best games in the Six Nations against England,” said Howley. “I know things have been said about the performances of some players, but as a coaching team we talked about the opportunity to go out again. You do not become a bad team overnight. We missed six of seven try scoring opportunities against Scotland: fine margins make a difference and we need to get on the positive side of them. We expect a reaction on Friday night.”
Wales v Ireland, Principality Stadium, 8.05pm Friday 10 March
Wales Halfpenny; North, Davies, S Williams, L Williams; Biggar, Webb; Evans, Owens, Francis, Ball, AW Jones (capt), Warburton, Tipuric, Moriarty Replacements Baldwin, Smith, Lee, Charteris, Faletau, G Davies, S Davies, Roberts.
Ireland Kearney; Earls, Ringrose, Henshaw, Zebo; Sexton, Murray; McGrath, Best (capt), Furlong, Ryan, Toner, CJ Stander, O’Brien, Heaslip Replacements N Scannell, Healy, J Ryan, Henderson, O’Mahony, Marmion, Jackson, Bowe.
