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Wales explain logic of picking both Reffell and Morgan to start
By Liam Heagney
Warren Gatland has explained why he has opted to pick two specialist opensides to start this Saturday’s Rugby World Cup quarter-final versus Argentina rather than go with the traditional balance of a bulkier blindside along with a fetcher No7.
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The Welsh last weekend lost No8 Taulupe Faletau for the remainder of the tournament in France after he broke his arm during the 43-19 pool win over Georgia.
Gatland has now reacted by shifting blindside Aaron Wainwright to fill that positional vacancy and name with captain Morgan at blindside with Reffell retaining the No7 role he had versus the Georgians.
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Morgan had worn the No7 in the opening three pool matches against Fiji, Portugal and Australia, but he will now pack down at blindside after Gatland decided that the best thing for Wales was to get their best players on the pitch to face the Pumas regardless of position.
“It was a really healthy debate with the coaches in terms of which way we went,” explained Gatland on Thursday from Toulon after naming his team for Wales’ fourth successive World Cup quarter-final appearance.
“Did we go with a traditional six – someone with a bit more size? But we felt the way Tommy played (against Georgia), with turnovers at the breakdown, it’s going to be really competitive there on the weekend. It was a matter of getting our best players on the field.
“I spoke to Jac and he was very comfortable moving to six. I did say to him, ‘I think it’s tough on you, I think you have been the best seven in this tournament so far’. I feel we have got a couple of world-class sevens at our disposal.
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“Long term, it’s not something we want to replicate on too many occasions, and if we get through this weekend, it might be a different decision made for potentially a semi-final. But it’s horses for courses, and with what we are expecting from Argentina, we have gone with that. We think they will do a great job for us.”
Updating the injury situation where Liam Williams and Dan Biggar will both start while Gareth Anscombe misses out, Gatland said: “Liam’s fine, he just took quite a severe knock on his knee last week. He was up and running on Tuesday. We kept him out of the contact stuff but he took a full part today [Thursday].
“Dan was the same. We put him on the bench last week but didn’t need to use him. His pec(toral muscle) is just a bit sore. Gareth is up and running and fingers crossed, hopefully if things goes well for us on Saturday, he is in contention for next week.
“In terms of contingency, whether that would have been Leigh Halfpenny – we are expecting Argentina to kick a lot of ball to us so that was one consideration – or whether we moved Louis (Rees-Zammit) to full-back and Rio (Dyer) started on the wing, so we had options to cover that but we didn’t really have to go through the process because from Tuesday, we were very confident Liam was going to be fit.”
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Gatland also shrugged aside the suggestion from Argentina boss Michael Cheika that Wales are quarter-final favourites. “I don’t know where Michael has got that from, he is probably trying to take some pressure off himself. If you read too much, there was plenty of speculation and people predicting we wouldn’t even get out of the group. But we embrace that.
“We can only control the things we do and we knew what we were doing with the group and if things change, you have to be comfortable with whatever is thrown at you. We haven’t spoken about underdogs or favourites’ tags, we are just going through our own processes and working as hard as we can to make sure the preparation is right for Saturday.”
