Wales Takes Away England’s Hopes on Winning 6 Nations
By Audrey Nolan
Wales took away England’s hopes to win the 6 Nations tournament with a victory of 26-19 in Twikenham during the teams opening game.
England showed some problems in the attack, and their coach Brian Ashton tried to fix those problems in the half time but it wasn’t enough. The star of the game, Wales player James Hook scored 16 points during the second half, 2 conversions and 4 penalties.
This made doubtful the possibility of England to win the tournament since they have only one game left at home and then they have to travel to face the tournament favourite, France, improving Scotland and Italy.
But Wales see now a possibility to win the title under the command of coach Warren Gatland since its 2005 Grand Slam victory.
"I can't put it into words," Wales captain Ryan Jones said. "It's the most fantastic day of my career. We knew we were good enough, it was just down to putting all the things we're good at into practice."
Strettle's early injury with the scores at 3-3 hadn't seemed to hurt England, since it led to a debut for Lesley Vainikolo. Vainikolo leapt high over Mark Jones on the left wing to grab Jonny Wilkinson's cross-field kick from the air; Wilkinson converted and, after Hook got three points back to make it 16-6, the game seemed to hinge on a disallowed try for Paul Sackey.
Despite Wilkinson’s additional penalty to stretch the lead, England looked very disappointed and Wales, seemingly encouraged by the fact that it had not conceded further tries. Hook converted all and send Wales seven points clear for the last 11 minutes, most of which Wales spent inside England's 22.
But right now Wales has a difficult match to think about against Scotland which is in 1 week. "We've got a big game next week, so it's home early and up in the morning," Jones said.
While England is in deep trouble already, Ireland's performance in Dublin suggested it will struggle to win the northern hemisphere's top tournament for the first time since it was expanded to six teams in 2000.
"We lacked a bit of accuracy and had we taken a couple of those chances it would have made our job easier," Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan said. "It was a performance that turned ugly as it often has in the past against Italy and we had to dig out an ugly win.
"It wasn't the display I wanted because it wasn't polished but it's the first day of the championship and it can happen that way."
About the author
Audrey Nolan is a high-ranking writer on sports for the online betting industry. Feel free to reprint this article in its whole on your site, make sure to leave all links in place and do not modify any of the content.