Tonga no match for the Welsh

By Mark Stevens
17/11/18

Wales head coach Warren Gatland lauded the impact of his replacements after their comprehensive 74-24 drubbing of Tonga in Cardiff.

Gatland’s side hadscored just three tries in the first-half, but the floodgates opened after the interval with the help of some handy contributions from the reserves, including Exeter Chiefs prop Tomas Francis.

Second-half replacements Aled Davies, Cory Hill and Rhys Patchell all got themselves on the try column as Wales scored seven in the second-half total.

“If you look at the game in segments, we started exceptionally well, we got ourselves into a bit of a hole then dug ourselves out of it with an outstanding second-half performance,” said Gatland.

“I thought the bench was good again. As a collective group, they should be pretty proud of that. We have spoken in the past about trying to get momentum from the bench and they are really upping it. I thought they made a significant impact.”

Gatland then went on to praise the strength in depth at fly-half, with Dan Biggar, Patchell and Gareth Ansombe all impressive in recent weeks.

Biggar scored a total of 14 points, while Patchell excelled when he came on.

“The pleasing thing is that all our 10s are playing well. We have been pleased with Gareth and Rhys was excellent when he came on,” Gatland said. “In a number of positions, we have some strength in depth and some real selection headaches.”

Gatland then turned his attention to the focus of the Springboks, whom he thinks will present his side with their biggest challenge of the November internationals thus far.

“They have gone back to traditional South African rugby, physical players, direct, it is going to be a real challenge for us,” added the Kiwi coach. “The good thing about where we are is that we are building our self-belief and confidence.

“We have had some good success over South Africa in recent years. It is important for us to hopefully build on that and it will be nice to have a clean sweep in the autumn.”

Included in the Tonga side was Exeter Chiefs forward Onehunga Kaufusi, who came on as a replacement.