Northern Edition

Select Edition

Northern Northern
Southern Southern
Global Global
New Zealand New Zealand
France France

Wales issue fitness update on Jones' knee ahead of Six Nations opener

By PA
(Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images)

Wales captain Alun Wyn Jones appears on course to be available for his team’s Guinness Six Nations opener against Ireland. Jones, who has made a world record 152 Test match appearances for Wales and the British and Irish Lions, has not played since early December.

ADVERTISEMENT

The 35-year-old Ospreys lock suffered a knee injury during Wales’ Autumn Nations Cup finale against Italy. “I have been up and running now for two or three weeks and I have progressed really well,” said Jones ahead of the Ireland appointment on February 7. “I am back in training.”

Wales head coach Wayne Pivac, meanwhile, delivered positive injury bulletins on lock Cory Hill (hamstring), prop Wyn Jones (neck) and scrum-half Tomos Williams (shoulder). Pivac said: “They are all pretty good. They are all partaking in some shape or form in training.

Video Spacer

Chris Ashton’s first media interview as a Worcester player

Video Spacer

Chris Ashton’s first media interview as a Worcester player

“Tomos, who probably looked worst with the knock, is probably looking the best. He is in full training now. Wyn Jones is back training, Cory Hill is doing rehabilitation on a slight hamstring injury, so they are all looking very good. Nobody new has been called into the squad.

“We have some pretty special people that look after our players in terms of their conditioning. Alun Wyn could testify to the amount of work that he’s been doing in the last eight weeks. You wouldn’t think Alun Wyn has been out for too long at all if you look at him in training. Big game players, generally speaking, can step up to the plate. It’s about how long they can go for across the 80 minutes. That’s the question.”

Although Wales will return to Cardiff’s Principality Stadium after playing their Autumn Nations Cup games in Llanelli, their fixtures will again be behind closed doors. “We get the 16th man at the Principality Stadium with our fans, who are fantastic. But you take that away, and it’s a different challenge,” Pivac said. “As players, you don’t have that extra motivational factor there, but it’s something that players and management have had to get to grips with. It is different, there are no two ways about it.”

Wales normally prefer to play home games under a Principality Stadium closed roof. Asked if Covid-19 could prevent that indoor spectacle from happening, Pivac added: “We’ve had discussions with the stadium around that and there are plenty of areas within the stadium to open up apart from the roof.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Also, everybody that is in the red zone in the stadium will have been tested. Obviously, that applies to both groups of players and management. We would like to think it’s a pretty safe environment – we are talking about a large, expansive area. We would like to think the roof will be closed and that would benefit all players.”

Wales won just three of their ten Tests last year, which was Pivac’s first at the helm after succeeding Warren Gatland, while he also oversaw a disappointing fifth-place finish in the Six Nations. “We got ourselves into some good positions in those games but we weren’t able to capitalise because of a malfunctioning set-piece,” he said. “That’s clearly a big drive for us, to improve in that area, as well as across the board, to be honest.”

ADVERTISEMENT

LIVE

{{item.title}}

Trending on RugbyPass

Comments

0 Comments
Be the first to comment...

Join free and tell us what you really think!

Sign up for free
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest Features

Comments on RugbyPass

J
JW 5 minutes ago
‘The problem with this year’s Champions Cup? Too many English clubs’

Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.


Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.


So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).


You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.


I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?

120 Go to comments
f
fl 3 hours ago
‘The problem with this year’s Champions Cup? Too many English clubs’

"Right, so even if they were the 4 worst teams in Champions Cup, you'd still have them back by default?"

I think (i) this would literally never happen, (ii) it technically couldn't quite happen, given at least 1 team would qualify via the challenge cup, so if the actual worst team in the CC qualified it would have to be because they did really well after being knocked down to the challenge cup.

But the 13th-15th teams could qualify and to be fair I didn't think about this as a possibility. I don't think a team should be able to qualify via the Champions Cup if they finish last in their group.


Overall though I like my idea best because my thinking is, each league should get a few qualification spots, and then the rest of the spots should go to the next best teams who have proven an ability to be competitive in the champions cup. The elite French clubs generally make up the bulk of the semi-final spots, but that doesn't (necessarily) mean that the 5th-8th best French clubs would be competitive in a slimmed down champions cup. The CC is always going to be really great competition from the semis onwards, but the issue is that there are some pretty poor showings in the earlier rounds. Reducing the number of teams would help a little bit, but we could improve things further by (i) ensuring that the on-paper "worst" teams in the competition have a track record of performing well in the CC, and (ii) by incentivising teams to prioritise the competition. Teams that have a chance to win the whole thing will always be incentivised to do that, but my system would incentivise teams with no chance of making the final to at least try to win a few group stage matches.


"I'm afraid to say"

Its christmas time; there's no need to be afraid!

120 Go to comments
TRENDING
TRENDING Stuart Lancaster 'wants out' of Racing 92 and eyeing Euro giants job Stuart Lancaster 'wants out' of Racing 92 and eyeing Euro giants job
Search