It was a good weekend for Welsh sport. In Wales’ penultimate Rugby World Cup warm-up match, we beat the reigning 6 Nations champions in Dublin, no easy feat. I did not see the match, but from all accounts the 16-10 score line was flattering to Ireland, with most rugby writers in the newspapers I read saying that Wales were much the better team. It seems that Wales were particularly dominant in the breakdown.
How useful these warm-up matches are for determining true form going into a World Cup is debatable. I’m sure they are very useful to the coaching team to test various combinations and tweak things at the set pieces, but personally I don’t think that they give much of an indicator of form. No coaching team is going to reveal any attacking tricks they may have up their sleeves, so I wouldn’t pay much attention to Wales’ lack of attacking potency.
Wales are, of course, drawn in the “group of death” with England and Australia. England have looked fairly indifferent in their two warm-up matches against France, but next Saturday they host Ireland at Twickenham. I will be hoping for an Ireland victory; if Ireland were to win that match I think England’s confidence going into the World Cup would take a massive blow, which can only help Wales. We will play Italy in Cardiff on the same day, the last time we played them in March we thrashed them so how useful a game this will be seems debatable to me.
Yesterday Wales’ only team in the English Premier League – Swansea – got a wonderful win at home against Manchester United. It puts Swansea into 4th place in the table, although of course one cannot read too much into the standings after just four games. My team Chelsea, however, are wallowing in 13th place after a home defeat to Crystal Palace on Saturday. With two losses, a win and a draw from their first four games, it is the worst start to a season that Chelsea have had in many years. Manchester City, on the other hand, have four wins from four and look very impressive.