Six Nations 2016: Wales brush off the barbs to target title

Victory over France was no thing of beauty but the Welsh will head to Twickenham in very good heart

Jonathan Davies made Wales's try but there is more to come from the centre (Getty)

A pair of England international players, Freddie Burns and Tom Youngs, who were hardly likely to have been standing up particularly for either team, tweeted during the BBC’s television coverage of Wales’s win over France on Friday night to criticise the “constant moaning” among the commentators. Moaning about the moaning, eh?

Life can be tough in the limelight but, unsurprisingly, the Wales defence coach Shaun Edwards cut through the critical chorus yesterday, as he looked ahead to the pivotal meeting away to England on Saturday week. “It was good to see the Cardiff crowd getting behind our defence,” said Edwards, the Welsh team’s English defence coach. “The fans are appreciating the tackling as well as the attack.”

The 19-10 result keeps Wales on track, after their opening draw in Ireland and home win over Scotland, to collect a fifth Six Nations title in the nine seasons that Edwards’s boss Warren Gatland has been in charge. With bottom-placed Italy visiting Cardiff on the tournament’s final day, Wales’s fate would seem to rest with that trip to Twickenham on 12 March.

The question of whether this Welsh team will ever regularly beat southern-hemisphere opposition playing the way they did on Friday may be entirely valid, and it will be answered on a three-Test tour to New Zealand in June.

For the next fortnight, however, not much is likely to change, and the TV summarisers Jonathan Davies and Brian Moore did praise elements of positive Welsh play, while there certainly is not much to be thrilled by in a transitional French team.

Wales did what they have been expected to do in recent years: carried hard around the corner, defended like demons, and attempted to use their wings George North and Alex Cuthbert when the opportunity was on (North scored his second try in two matches, which will boost his confidence, albeit in hugely fortunate fashion with an unwitting ricochet to him off the boot of the France fly-half Jules Plisson).

A legitimate criticism of Wales is their inability or unwillingness to move the ball through the hands in the red zone of the 22, or anywhere really. More needs to be seen of Taulupe Faletau and Alun Wyn Jones in this regard. The footballing flanker Justin Tipuric had been sacrificed from the starting line-up to accommodate Sam Warburton and Dan Lydiate alongside the No 8 Faletau against a big French pack. And Faletau more than did his bit as a tackling machine, taking his total of tackles for the Championship to 53 made and none missed in three matches.

Edwards hinted that Faletau had been off his game since the World Cup in October – when Wales, as no one needs reminding, beat England and knocked them out of the pool at Twickenham – by his on-off transfer from Newport Gwent Dragons to Bath, which will now go ahead this summer.

“He’s certainly coming back into form,” Edwards said, “the kind of form we expect from him. His fitness levels have gone up, back to where they were in the World Cup. We expect Toby to be outstanding because he is an outstanding player.”

Meanwhile a confrontational Gatland described the win as “brilliant, what Test-match rugby is all about” and added that he “couldn’t be happier”. The Kiwi head coach also said he was conducting an interview soon after the final whistle with the BBC’s reporter Sonja McLaughlan only because his contract obliged him to do so. The grudging Gatland has reduced his press duties to the minimum, so if he wishes to aim any barbs at England’s Eddie Jones in the coming days, he will need to pick his moment.

“The England game is massive,” said Edwards. “The fact that we have drawn a game doesn’t matter because we would still have had to beat England to win it [the Championship]. We feel it was a tough Test match against France. They are a far more resilient team than they were two years ago, or in the World Cup. England will be a game where sometimes you have to deliver in your own 22, defensively. We will concentrate on that over the next two weeks.”

Jonathan Davies, the outside-centre who missed the World Cup through injury and maybe has more gifts for being expansive than the current set-up allows him to display alongside Jamie Roberts, used the vernacular of the age to sum up the players’ reaction.

“The French did not contest that heavily at the breakdown,” he said, “they were fanning out in the line and it meant there was not much space. There were times where our pick-and-go got us some go-forward but it was a bit of an arm wrestle really. I now have to go back next week to [his French club] Clermont and then I will get back into the mix for the England game. I have got a suit in the wardrobe out in Clermont which is covered in the Welsh dragon so I might be wearing that this week.”

Gatland’s belligerence is undoubtedly based on nuggets of fact, such as Wales going 20 years from 1988 without a win at Twickenham before he came along. Edwards has been his constant right-hand man and they will draw on that togetherness now.

“Our lads have played together quite a lot,” the Lancastrian said. “Some players come in, like [the loosehead prop] Rob Evans, but generally we should have an understanding like a club team. The coaching staff have been together for a while, as well. You’ve got to remember, we only have four [regional] teams. We have got to draw on every little bit of energy we can get.”