Today’s match will be crucial both in terms of this season’s Six Nations Championship and selection for this summer’s British & Irish Lions tour according to Wales kicking coach Neil Jenkins.
The man who kicked the Lions to a series victory on their fabled 1997 tour of South Africa on the way to becoming the first player in history to register 1000 points in Test rugby, is better placed to judge than most having worked closely with Lions head coach Warren Gatland for several years as part of the Wales management team.
Encouraging, then, for Scottish hopefuls that after a decade that has seen Wales put together an unprecedented winning run in this fixture, he seemed genuinely to see it as a four-way battle for places this time around.
“I’m sure there are some selection headaches for Gats (Gatland) at this moment in time with some of the performances that have gone on,” he observed.
“Ireland-Scotland was very tough as was Wales-England. Scotland won that game but Ireland could have come back and snuck it, while England beat us when we’d like to think we’d probably done enough to win the game. So our game against Scotland, our game with Ireland in a couple of weeks’ time, England-Ireland at the end of the championship, all these games are going to be massive in terms of Lions selection, who fronts up and who plays well.”
He noted that the balance can change significantly in the course of 80 minutes.
“I think four years ago England were in pole position until obviously we managed to turn them over in the last game and a lot of our players put their hands up that day to go on that tour,” he said.
“So every game’s important and tomorrow is pivotal in Lions selection, there’s no doubting that.”
It was typical of Jenkins to give a straight answer on that subject rather than engage in the ‘one game at a time’ and ‘Lions selection will look after itself if we play well’ type of clichés that predominate at this time of year.
With the overall records during the past year of England and Ireland suggesting that they remain likelier to have the bigger selections for that trip to New Zealand, though, this match is all the more important for the Scots as they bid to improve on their lot of the last 20 years that has seen no more than three Scots selected in the initial tour party since that 1997 trip to South Africa.
For all Wales’ recent dominance in the fixture Jenkins, then, made it clear that he is consequently expecting a tough battle.
“If you win the first two or you’re one out of two it’s massive,” he said of the fixture on the middle weekend.
“You’re either going for a Grand Slam or it can get you back in the mix for the Championship.
“Scotland had an outstanding win against Ireland who have shown up so well in recent times with their performances against New Zealand. They played very well against Scotland who played even better to beat them on the day and they had to and they were very close in Paris a week later to coming away with a victory. Probably looking back on that they’ll be disappointed they didn’t win that game. So it’s going to be a tough game. It always is up here and we’re under no illusions.”
He also applauded Scotland’s choice of stand-in captain, who is as well known in the valleys these days as in his homeland.
“John Barclay is an outstanding rugby player,” said Jenkins.
“We see that week-in, week-out with the Scarlets where he puts his body on the line consistently. He’s fantastic around the contact areas, his tackling skills are superb and there’s no doubt he’ll lead from the front tomorrow.”
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