Chris Hewett: Welsh boyos in world of hard English men

COMMENT

Somewhere in the deepest recesses of the Welsh memory bank, the dateline is still alive: June 8th, 1987 - Brisbane, Australia.

If you believe Alan Phillips, now manager of the Wales team but a mere cauliflower-faced hooker from Cardiff back then, it was the worst game of rugby of all time. But oh, the result. Wales 16 England 3. World Cup quarter-final glory for the Red Dragonhood, an early plane home for those arrogant buggers in the red rose army. It cannot possibly happen again, can it?

Probably not, although there is something about the Welsh that continues to work its way under English skin and turn the flesh cold.

If this tournament arrived six months too late for Clive Woodward's team - a proposition worthy of debate, despite England's vital victory over the Springboks in the second round of pool matches - it very definitely came four years too early for the Welsh, who are slowly regathering the threads of a game unravelled by the demands of professionalism, but are only half way through the process.

The balance of the argument remains in England's favour. They may not be scrummaging terribly well - one of the myths about Phil Vickery, that great hunk of human farm machinery from the West Country, is that he scrums as well as he does everything else - but the sheer bulk of the English tight forwards has been too much for the Welsh to handle for some years now.

The English loose combination, shorn of the injured Richard Hill, has been operating at 50 per cent capacity all tournament, but 50 per cent tends to be plenty against a one-man back row by the name of Martyn Williams.

Wales have a hot back or two - Iestyn Harris, their bank-breaking recruit from rugby league, shows the odd flash of inspiration here and there by way of justifying the kind of salary generally reserved for the inhabitants of Hollywood and Old Trafford - but stack them up against Wilkinson, Greenwood and Cohen, and what do you have? Boys in a world of men.

So the onus is on Wales to take every last vestige of positive inspiration from their joyous uprising against the All Blacks in Sydney last weekend and fathom a way of neutralising England's tighter, more structured game for the full 80 minutes. This is far easier said than done.

The fear factor attached to the New Zealand experience was different from that attached to the England one.

Against the All Blacks, Wales faced a test of pace and skill; against the likes of Martin Johnson and Lawrence Dallaglio, the test will be one of pure physicality. The Welsh have always been able to play football. They have not always been able to wrestle.

A really bad defeat by England, along the lines of the 44-15 hammering in Cardiff in 2001 or the 50-10 slaughter at Twickenham a year later, would erase so many of the good things Wales took from their four-try display last weekend that they would almost be back to their pre-Italy state: a neurotic melange of uncertainty, depression and fear.

England might have picked their sharpest attacking runner, Iain Balshaw, and their best passing halfback, Andy Gomarsall. They might have included their most dynamic ball-carrying prop, Trevor Woodman. How many of these are in the run-on team? None.

Gomarsall is not even on the bench. Josh Lewsey remains at fullback, Matt Dawson is at halfback, dear old Jason Leonard is in the front row, preparing to deliver a lesson to whatever young pup the Welsh happen to throw at him.

And towering over them all is Johnson, beetle-browed and glowering. Patently, the Welsh will not win the muscle match.

But if they dare to back themselves in open field this could be a contest worthy of the name.

For the sake of the sanity of those back in the valleys, here's hoping.

* Chris Hewett is rugby writer for the Independent.