After the away victory in Dublin in the second round of the warm-up series, the nation of Wales would have been happy to let this last one go, or at least leave it to an entire team of reserves. The commercial element of providing a show for the 52,981 ticket-holders aside, this outing against physically uncompromising Italy had trouble written all over it.
And trouble there came. Wales, on the scoreboard that scarcely mattered, had worked their way back to within three points when Rhys Webb, one of the principal characters in the drama within the drama to find that essential group of six or seven world-class performers that the World Cup champions will have, went down injured at a ruck and after a lengthy delay was taken off on the field-buggy ambulance. This was no ordinary ankle injury to an ordinary scrum-half. This looked nasty and Webb is special.
In the second half, and with the game eventually having been turned around in Wales’s favour, Leigh Halfpenny was left gingerly flexing his leg. The buggy ambulance was back on the field and one of the top players on board. The points machine, Halfpenny, joins the pivot of the team, Webb, in doubt for the World Cup.
It was by far the worst thing to happen to Wales in the first half, but it was by no means the only mishap. The scrummage was penalised by George Clancy at regular intervals and the breakdown displeased the referee in equal measure. And there were individual errors and fumbles. Tomas Francis dropped a pass, George North kicked a ball out on the full, Taulupe Faletau turned away from a defensive five-metre scrum and was bundled into touch. An attacking driving maul was turned over and there was a little bit of accidental obstruction in the next movement.
It is a team game and when the team are going badly there is a collective responsibility, but poor old Alex Cuthbert single-handedly summed up Wales’s woes. Ever since he was replaced by Liam Williams in the starting team, the wing has been out of sorts, all the more exposed in his desire – his desperation – to regain his spot. Here he came off second best with Sergio Parisse’s elbow as they went up for a high ball. He lost the ball trying to sneak over the top of a ruck set up on the Italian line by North.
Cuthbert had a twin part to play in Italy’s try. He gave a pass 35 metres out and watched it picked off by Parisse. The Italian captain, No8 and general superstar, did not quite have the legs to go the full distance to the far goalline, being overhauled a couple of paces short by Scott Williams, but from the ruck, Leonardo Sarto managed to cut inside Cuthbert guarding the ruck. The right wing Sarto scored the late try in Rome at the end of the Six Nations to put an end to Wales’s charge for the title; here he made an early dent in Wales’s World Cup plans. The right wing Cuthbert was having a tough day.
Did nothing go well for Wales? Not really. They conceded three penalties in rapid succession after the try – two at the breakdown and one at the scrum – and Tommaso Allan kicked the middle one. Dan Biggar then kicked away turnover ball to suggest a tightening of the blinkers – this would not be a day for daring.
Immediately, however, Wales scored. One player was exempt from the general malaise. Scott Williams had already shown admirable pace and stamina to track back from a really compromised position at a maul to catch Parisse before the Sarto try; now he ran hard in attack and stormed through Gonzalo Garcia. Wales were on the drive at last and it was not long before North was taking the long cut-out pass by the same Williams to score.
Sam Warburton, too, had a robust game, a presence at the breakdown and lively on the hoof. He was not quite as sharp as Ross Moriarty who came off the bench late – for the curiously out-of-sorts Faletau – and set off to make a point or two at being left out of Warren Gatland’s final 31-player squad. It was a point well made by an outsider. The others on the inside could not disguise the fact that this was a horribly awkward encounter, one that they could all have done without.
Even when the game had been turned the home team’s way, through five penalties by Halfpenny and one by Biggar in the full back’s absence, Italy had the final say. Replacements had their say, Carlo Canna with a drop goal and Guglielmo Palazzani with the last try.
Wales need some good news before they face Uruguay in a fortnight. It would be reassuring if Liam Williams could report fit for full duty after fracturing a metatarsal. It would be good if the medics declared Saturday’s alarms to be false, that the exits by buggy were precautionary. Good, but extremely unlikely.
This was a grim day for Wales and has rearranged the odds and shifted all the speculation that go with working out who will qualify from Pool A. At least Wales will not to have suffer any more warm-up agony before the real thing, before they face England and Australia at Twickenham. If that is a crumb of comfort it is a miniscule reward from this day in Cardiff.
