Peter Jackson verdict: Promise fades for Wales as Steve Hansen finds a new batch
Given the choice of leaving to spare the nation further punishment or remaining to flog the proverbial dead horse 12,000 miles from home, the result would surely be a landslide in favour of calling it quits, especially after yesterday.
The series may have been going downhill from the last quarter of the opening Test in Auckland, but Wales kept promising something different about this trip. At the very least, had they not cured themselves of the chronic old Welsh habit of skidding to the bottom of their mountain faster than Franz Klammer?
Now, after witnessing them slide like the clappers as well as the Klammers, we know better. Measured by the only gauge that matters, the scoreboard, Wales went back 13 years in less than an hour-and-a-half and the irony would not have been lost on the ex-detective presiding over their execution.
Steve Hansen knew how Warren Gatland would have felt as a Kiwi coach humbled by his compatriots because Hansen had beaten him to it. He was Wales coach when they lost 55-3 in Hamilton, Gatland’s hometown, before the 2003 World Cup.
While Wales had not lost on a similar scale in New Zealand until yesterday, they would surely have conceded 60 but for Liam Williams’ heroic prevention of two more converted tries. Even then the one constant Welsh star could not save his country from a fate worse than the worst Lions of the professional era.
It takes some doing to lose three Tests in New Zealand by an aggregate margin of 67 points as the overblown and overrun Lions did on their last visit. When Wales do their sums and calculate the full extent of the damage it will amount to 72 points, demoralising proof that they had outpointed the Lions at their worst.
This, as some notable ex-players claimed, was supposed to be the best chance any Wales squad had of winning where they have never won before. Their opponents had been shorn of more than 700 caps of experience through the retirement of six players, including the greatest flanker (Richie McCaw) and the greatest stand-off (Dan Carter).
Almost one third of those who put them to the sword yesterday had barely rolled off the All Black assembly line – three new caps and four more (Lima Sopoaga, George Moala, Codie Taylor, Waisake Naholo) with barely ten between them.
Hansen threw them all in, having opted to experiment and run ‘a few risks’ with the series in the bag. Risks? He still won by 40 but could not have reckoned on a collective aiding and abetting of the margin through the tactical naivety of the opposition.
When confronted by the finest counter-attacking team on the planet, it is not advisable to kick too deep. Wales did that and kept doing it, literally playing into New Zealand hands.
Ben Smith and George Moala, to name but two of a whole squadron of fliers, are dangerous enough without giving them time and space to pick their angles. Beauden Barrett never looks a gift horse in the mouth and before Wales thought about trying to close the stable door, every single thoroughbred had bolted.
Loose kicks from Dan Biggar provided the launch pad for the first and second tries. Barrett scored the next two, Biggar missing his opposite number for the third and failing to stop him muscling over for the fourth within the hour.
From then on it was only a matter of how many more. Gatland spoke about “taking a lot of lessons from what we’ve learnt from these three Tests”. The trick is to learn them before the event, not after it.
The apologists will trot out the tired old excuse that Wales had run out of gas at the end of a punishing season, the implication being that it really wasn’t their fault, that something else beyond their control had been the architect of their downfall.
What piffle. Sam Warburton, the inestimable Wales captain who has never sought refuse behind goobledygook, gave it straight from the shoulder as usual: “There are no excuses. The boys were well-rested.”
England endured a more punishing season than Wales, literally and metaphorically, not least because some of their Red Roses were involved in Champions’ Cup and domestic Grand Finals. Look how they finished, if not quite as fresh as daisies then still with something left despite the unrelenting ferocity of going toe-to-toe with the Wallabies and beating them every time.
And Wales? They gave an embryonic New Zealand team a run for their money for 65 minutes, then began to subside before dissolving. No doubt their coaches will claim to have discovered one but there can never any positives to be found in a 40-point beating.
Courage and character in Test rugby are taken for granted. Wales had bagfuls of both but Gatland and his coaches will be alarmed at the gap in high-speed skills and on-the-hoof nous. If they aren’t, then they ought to be.
Too many All Blacks, most notably Barrett, the Smiths, Dagg, Kieran Read, Dane Coles and the gigantic Brodie Retallick, were in a class of their own.
Three more defeats highlight another cause for concern much closer to home – the gap that England have opened over Wales since the neighbours cleared the way for Eddie Jones by knocking them out of the World Cup six months ago.
England’s nine straight wins compares to five straight Welsh defeats and a miserable try-count of 27-7. As for the All Blacks, the consecutive losses from the most one-sided Test fixture of all is up to 28 and no end in sight, barring a referendum.
