An open invitation from the world’s most famous touring club offered an ideal solution to a potentially embarrassing gap in the Welsh fixture list – one which leaves virtually their entire squad without a competitive match for five weeks before the opening Test against the Springboks on June 14.
The regions’ collective failure to reach the Pro 12 play-offs means that every home-based Welsh international will play his last match on May 10. Only three players – George North at Northampton plus the Racing duo of Jamie Roberts and Mike Phillips – are on course to be in any meaningful club action after that.
The Baa-baas told the WRU they were ‘available and willing’ to fit a fixture against Wales into their end-of-season schedule which finishes against an England XV at Twickenham on June 1.
The prospect of a midweek match in Cardiff or Swansea three or four days later would have allowed head coach Warren Gatland to give most of his squad a warm-up for the two Springbok matches.
That makes the WRU decision all the more surprising given that such a match, unlike at least one previous Barbarian match, would have real relevance. While Wales kick their heels, the Springboks, in contrast, will test themselves against a World XV in Cape Town on June 7, a week before the opening match against Wales.
It raises questions about Wales’ forward-planning and why they have failed to fill the five-week gap with a meaningful fixture before embarking on their latest attempt to stem a run of 14 straight defeats by the Boks.
A Baa-baas squad featuring Joe Rokocoko among a raft of European-based All Blacks would have had more box-office appeal than Gatland’s idea for a trial match.
Ironically, when Wales last played the Baa-baas, at the Millennium Stadium on the first Saturday of June two years ago, they chose a second XV because their main men were in Australia seven days before taking on the Wallabies.
On the day Martyn Williams completed a century of caps for Wales, almost 60,000 turned up.  Wales also saw fit to arrange June friendlies against the Baa-baas in the two previous seasons, on each occasion elevating the match to Test status by awarding caps.
The proposed fixture would have been against a Wales XV on the same non-cap lines as the one against an England XV.
PETER JACKSON
Tagged Barbarians, Wales
Barbarians match bid snubbed by Wales
No comments:
Post a Comment