By Andrew Collins
August 5 2007

After yesterdays humiliating and record breaking loss to England, Gareth Jenkins must ask how useful the 62-5 test match was to his squad.

Before the match, I wrote an article stating my beliefs that Jenkins had the plan just right, putting out a weakened side, I’m no longer as sure about that, but neither am I worried by the massive score line.

The simple fact is that most of those players will either not make the World Cup squad or even make an appearance when we get there. This was the last chance saloon for the likes of Michael Owen, Ceri Sweeney and Will James, all of whom should now in my own opinion, be left out of that squad.

The fallout from the loss is very minimal in the grander scale of things, but even so it wasn’t encouraging to see us taking out so early and easily. We were undone by the time old England tactic of kick to the corner and rollover mauls. Now if Jenkins’ squad don’t know how to defend against that, whether first team or not, we have serious problems.

To single out individual poor performances would take too long, but there were clearly individuals out there yesterday who didn’t look international standard, let alone World Cup ready. But Colin Charvis and Dafydd James were probably the best of a bad bunch if you have to name any.

The match will certainly have dampened spirits massively in camp Wales, a crushing defeat always has effects on the side, but against the old enemy will make this even worse. 

So was the heavy defeat as big a problem as it was a gap in the scores, probably not. I think there are more names in the OUT column than he originally would have wanted, but it’s far better they get showed up now than when the World Cup comes around. The moral will be down after a loss like this, but only a handful of those players will feature if the two sides do end up meeting in a month and a half’s time. The only real fear is the absolute lack of anything from Jenkins’ Wales. Dafydd James’ try was perhaps the best move of the match, a well worked first phase try, which England were helpless against. But apart from that one moment of greatness, there really was nothing that showed any signs of tactics or game plans.

Quite honesty, England possibly have more worries than Wales right now. They may be able to out muscle Wales’ 3^rd choice hooker, prop, locks and number 8, but will they be able to use those game plans against the likes of South Africa? Because I saw very little that would worry me if I were Jake White.