There is a doctoral thesis to be written on the psychology of Wales v England rugby fixtures in Cardiff. Hope, anxiety, fear, claustrophobia … and that’s just the cross-border trek to the Principality Stadium on big match days. Contractual small print and player power may have grabbed this week’s headlines but Wales’s fattest bonus should probably go to anybody who can finally sort out the Brynglas tunnels.
Then again at least there is still a live game to attend. Imagine, for a moment, if the threatened Welsh players’ strike had gone ahead? Tumbleweed blowing down Westgate Street, sad empty pubs, Valley Girl T-shirts back in the wardrobe … it would have been an utter financial and PR catastrophe. The Six Nations has weathered various storms over the years but nothing to compare with the bleak symbolism of Wales declining to lace up their boots to play the English.
It all leaves a significant question mark hanging over this most partisan of occasions. Who will be best able to put this week’s uncertainty behind them once the game starts? So much talking, arguing and brinkmanship has gone on that some have overlooked the shorter-term imperatives. Wales have lost both their previous championship games this month while England are already staring down the barrel of a bottom-half finish. There is pressure on both sides to perform.
It will become harder, certainly, for one or two of Wales’s established players to retain their well-paid status if the dragon cannot at least flare its nostrils and breathe some kind of fire. Eleven defeats in their past 14 Test matches is a grim sequence, and Warren Gatland and his players have not always seemed to be harrumphing from the exact same hymn sheet in recent days either.
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There is an argument that nothing papers over cracks quite like a win over England and that one decent 80-minute display, in terms of Welsh rugby’s future health, cannot be allowed to mask the far-reaching reforms still required elsewhere. Right now, though, Wales badly need their shop stewards to deliver back on the factory floor. If Ken Owens, Alun Wyn Jones, Justin Tipuric, Taulupe Faletau and the fit-again Louis Rees-Zammit cannot generate any hwyl this weekend, it really will be a worrying sign of the times.
It is not as if England’s recent away record (Italy excepted) in the Six Nations has been anything to write home about. They last won in Cardiff in 2017 and have won just once in Edinburgh since 2016. Apart from a solitary narrow success seven years ago, they have not otherwise conquered Paris since 2012. It is a similar tale in Dublin, where they have come second on three of their past four visits.
Not that England, clearly, have ever had a divine right to stroll across the Severn Bridge and pick up any rarebits they fancy. Wales were certainly sharper in thought and deed two years ago when they racked up 40 points against England for the first time. Give or take a couple of controversial first-half refereeing calls, notably Dan Biggar’s quick tap and cross kick when Owen Farrell was still addressing his players, it was the visitors’ indiscipline that proved costliest.
Concede 14 penalties again and England can expect the same outcome, particularly if they also struggle to find a second wind later in the game.
It has been instructive to hear their head coach, Steve Borthwick, say that, among other things, his side’s fitness is not where he would like it to be. Ironically it is a Welshman, Aled Walters, who has been appointed to improve things from this summer but, for now, Borthwick is having to be as patient as an international head coach can be.
“I think there is a conditioning aspect,” he says. “You can’t fix that quickly. I was pretty disappointed with the last 20 minutes of the Italy game and how we gave them some opportunities. I was pretty frank about saying our speed of ball wasn’t where I wanted it to be.”
That may have played a part in shaping Wales’s starting line-up which, along with plenty of lineout options, has the potential to stress-test England’s backline defence. The visitors are effectively fielding three fullbacks in expectation of a kicking fusillade but, with Biggar on the bench, it may be that Wales will probe elsewhere with plenty expected of the 20-year-old debutant Mason Grady in the centre alongside the similarly youthful Joe Hawkins.
The breakdown, as ever, will also be crucial with Leicester’s Tommy Reffell available to disrupt England off the bench. No longer, either, are the visitors blessed with as many seen-it-all veterans. Of England’s 23-man squad from the 2021 fixture only 10 remain and more than half of this weekend’s matchday squad will be playing in a Six Nations game in Cardiff for the first time. “Away fixtures in the Six Nations are as hard as they get because of how much it means,” said the hooker Jamie George. “Any team that goes to Wales and wins is pretty happy coming out of there.”
To make life fractionally more uncertain, the French referee Mathieu Raynal was also the official in charge of England’s game against Ireland last year after which he said he had been too lenient on the red rose scrum. It puts a further onus on England to scrum straight and clean, which George says is now their primary aim. “Probably there was a perception of the England scrum that we might mess around and end up on the floor. That’s gone. Richard Cockerill is very clear on how he wants us to scrum.”
In the end, though, a mental challenge awaits the two teams as much as a physical one. As Eddie Jones murmured two years ago, the middle Six Nations Saturday is often a “make or break” moment and the same applies now. “I don’t separate the physical from the mental, because the two are intrinsically linked,” says Borthwick. He is right to some extent but when Wales host England it is never that simple. There are plenty of reasons why this fixture is still ringed in red felt tip in diaries on either side of the bridge, with pride and respect still topping the list. If the hosts do not come out bristling, determined to right a few wrongs, Welsh rugby is truly in serious trouble.
