Wales side to face Ireland

First of all, the atmosphere was amazing on Saturday in the stadium, the anthem sent shivers down my spine and the singing and cheering on of the welsh team was deafening at times.

I said before hand that if we scored a try or two from open play it would have been an improvement, but to score 2 from open play and to come within a finger tip of a third was just an incredibly turnaround, especially when you consider that Ireland are ranked 1 in the world and have one of the tightest defences in the game.

Sheratt need a lot of credit, he picked players in their right positions (even Ben Thomas looked good) and also picked combinations that are very comfortable with each other.  More importantly he got them playing off the cuff stuff and entertaining the crowd.

The usually very confident and cocky Irish knew that they were in a serious match, choosing to take the points on offer over kicking to the corner and backing their catch and drive ability.

To be fair to the Irish though, the quality of their bench saw them over the line.  Aki was immense and James Ryan added to their already impressive carrying game.

For Scotland I wouldn’t make too many changes (injury permitting), the team certainly deserve another opportunity to show what they can do, bearing in mind that they only had 3 training sessions.

Whilst I agree that most sides have a bigger 12, I’d be tempted to keep the backline the same but maybe swap Thomas and Llewelyn around, depending on the situation, as having that extra kicking option outside the 10 is vital and Thomas is our only other place kicker.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what this team can do with a further 2 weeks preparation time.