2GS The Sunday Times February 13, 2022 3
Bath remain bottom of the table
having lost 13 of their 15 matches.
Exeter ended a three-game losing
run with a 24-15 win over Gloucester.
Freddie Clarke put Gloucester ahead
with their first attack, but Exeter
drew level when Jack Innard scored.
Patrick Schickerling’s try for
Exeter nine minutes after the break
came with Billy Twelvetrees in the
sin-bin.
Olly Woodburn went over with the
extra man and Tom O’Flaherty
secured a bonus point before
Santiago Carreras and Charlie
Chapman’s tries followed a yellow
card for Exeter’s Dafydd Jenkins.
Exeter, who had lost to Wasps,
London Irish and Montpellier in the
previous three weeks, avoided four
successive defeats for the first time
since November 2016 and move back
into the Premiership’s top six.
Gloucester remain third but have
played a game more than the sides
either side of themcome back from his injury even better
and it shows there is life in the old dog
yet. I am so excited for him and he is
going to do well because he has
trained so hard, he has prepped well
and his head is in a good place.”
The win maintains Sale’s move up
the table — they sit ninth — and while
Sanderson will be unhappy with a
lacklustre first half, the excellence of
McGinty allied to Tuilagi’s power and
the grafting play of captain Jono Ross
was too good for Worcester.
In Coventry, Alfie Barbeary had to
make do with a bench performance
after missing out with England again.
Yet the young forward shrugged off
his latest frustration to cross for two
late tries in Wasps’ bonus-point 34-24
victory over basement side Bath.
Rob Miller’s early try for Wasps was
cancelled out by Bath’s Tom Prydie.
Biyi Alo then put the home side ahead
before the Wales and Lions forward
Taulupe Faletau — returning from
injury — went over on 32 minutes forastonishing in a man seemingly in
such distress. To attempt a
50-metre kick for goal on what
appeared to be one leg was a bold
statement of mind over matter.
Somehow Biggar managed to reach
the crossbar.
Alex Cuthbert was the first to
react to that rebound. This was the
period of pressure that ended
eventually with the winning drop
goal. “The issue with the right
knee”, as Biggar described the
knock post-match, did not stop him
firing a stupendous penalty kick
nearly 50 metres from hand to
within five of Scotland’s line. As
Wales walked slowly to the lineout,
Biggar made the short five-metre
walk to the touchline, his job done.
In contrast, Russell threw one
fabulous pass and a host of scruffy
ones. Against England he had
waited patiently for his
opportunity. Here he tried to force
the pace. That was an error against
a Welsh team intent on taking the
steam out of the match.
The Scottish fly half is a virtuoso
but the afternoon belonged to
Biggar. Russell was second best as
Scotland came to Cardiff and were
conquered. Another dead dream.organised, neat and ready to follow
instructions — than he is the
legends of old.
The pulse doesn’t race but there
is no disguising the solidity Biggar
brought to this win, indeed, to a
distinguished career in which he
won his 100th international cap
(Wales and the Lions) yesterday.
Nothing too flash. He ran an early
blind-side scrum to show that he is
not short of a physical thrust but
there is little in the way of those
heart-stopping moments like the
Russell pass that sent the ever-
threatening Darcy Graham into the
corner for his second Six Nations
try of the season.
Russell wins you games. But
there are days when international
rugby is not so much a matter of
winning as not blowing it. The
Northampton fly half is not the
greatest match winner in the mould
of Barry John or Phil Bennett but
these are different times. Wales
have wanted stability from their
No 10 for some time and Dan is the
man when it comes to providing
platforms.
He is also one of the bravest
players on the planet. In the lead-
up to the ill-fated Lions tour he
hobbled his way through a series of
painful club injuries, bouncing
back with wince after wince. He
was suffering again yesterday.
Lesser mortals would have
limped off but the Wales captain is
made of the right stuff. Had they
been in need of some magic to get
back into the game his bravery
would have been tantamount to
madness. But with the game
grinding into attrition he was able
to stand taller than anyone else.
In obvious pain, he directed his
penalty kicks into the corner with
an accuracy and distanceBiggar brings up his international century with
a virtuoso performance to outshine Russell
Dreams and nightmares. The one
can merge into the other. So it
proved for Scotland, whose victory
against England is again relegated
into the realms of the one-off. Wales
had lost only once to Scotland in
Cardiff this century but after the
walloping they had taken in Dublin,
the Scots had every right to believe
that the bogey could be laid to rest.
But Ireland had started at a
speed against Wales that Scotland
rarely looked like matching and the
game gathered a claustrophobic
intensity. Scottish hopes of it
opening up for their broken field
runners in the final 20 minutes
dissolved with the referee, Nic
Berry, officiating over a sequence of
reset scrums.
It played into Welsh hands;
hands that were not up for magical
trickery. In the circumstances it
was no surprise that the headlines,
on this occasion, belonged to the
dependable Wales captain, Dan
Biggar.
The genius of Finn Russell was
bottled for huge chunks of the
game. No broken fields for the fly
half to attack, only a broken heart.
He watched ten of the last 15
minutes, sent to the sin-bin in the
sequence of play that led to the
inexorable Biggar drop goal.
There will be greater drop kicks
than the formality from ten metres
or so in front of the posts. Wales
had been camped in Scotland
territory as penalty followed
penalty. Quite why Biggar twice
opted for the kick to the corner was
a mystery. Wales had gone over
from an earlier five-metre drive but
with 69 minutes on the clock, this
was the time to take the points.
Russell had made a mess of a
long-range speculative drop but
Biggar’s kick was a purelyStuart Barnes
There was an unhappy return to the
AJ Bell Stadium for the former Sale
Sharks director of rugby Steve
Diamond, who saw his struggling
Worcester Warriors side fall away
badly in a 36-12 defeat yesterday.
Sale scored 26 unanswered points
in the second half, collecting two tries
after Perry Humphreys received a
yellow card, and their upturn in form
was triggered by Manu Tuilagi’s try.
Alex Sanderson, the Sale director
of rugby who took over when
Diamond left in 2020, now expects
Tuilagi to be called up by England
and predicts his centre will make a
significant impact. Sanderson said:
“Manu was outstanding and it is good
for the country that he will do just as
good a job as he did for us. He has‘Outstanding’ Tuilagi states England case
SIX NATIONS STANDINGS
P W D L PD B PtsFrance 22003319Ireland 21011626Scotland 2101 01 5Wales 2 1 0 1 -19 0 4England 1001 -31 1Italy 1 0 0 1 -27 0 0GALLAGHER
PREMIERSHIP
‘The fly half isn’t
in the mould of
Barry John or Phil
Bennett but these
are different times’
Biggar is tackled by Ali Price
Bath but Wasps’ Elliot Stooke replied.
Bath had Semesa Rokoduguni sent off
just after half-time but Ben Spencer’s
try put them ahead before Wasps hit
back with four tries as Bath had Tom
de Glanville sin-binned.
Paolo Odogwu and Barbeary both
crossed twice for Wasps to secure a
fourth successive Premiership win.pragmatic decision. The code has
shunned the drop goal over recent
years; it is a skill which is neglected.
Considering the three-point value
attached to it, this is one of those
trends over which rugby thinkers
will scratch their heads in years to
come.
The match-winning kick
summed up the Wales fly half ’s
performance, in many ways his
career. He does not have the
stardust of so many of his
predecessors. He is more like his
attacking coach, Stephen Jones —PW DL F A BPts
Leicester 151302 448 263 9 61
Saracens 149 1 4 480 254 11 49
Gloucester 15 9 1 5 3923439 47
Harlequins 148 06 353314 1143
Wasps 15 8 0 7 395 378 10 42
Exeter 15 8 0 7 3242829 41
Northampton 148 06 403 352 8 40
London Irish 15 6 3 6 386 384 10 40
Sale 15 7 1 7 343 309 7 39
Bristol 14 5 09 313 3887 27
Newcastle 14 5 1 8 225 3492 24
Worcester 15 3 1 11 2835267 21
Bath 15 2 0 13 251 4544 14GALLAGHER PREMIERSHIP
M ATCH STAT S
Trie s
1 1
Possession %
49 51
Territory %
56 44
Scrum success %
100 100
Lineout success %
100 100
Line breaks
1 5
Offloads
3 8
Breakdown steals
4 4
Turnovers won
4 4
Penalties conceded
8 13
Wales Scotland
GEOFF CADDICKLiam Williams is
halted by Hogg
during an
unrelenting game
in which Wales
made light of their
domestic issues