Wales drop Phillips and give Webb scrum-half berth

Wales boss Warren Gatland pulled no punches after dropping scrum-half star Mike Phillips for tomorrow night’s crunch RBS 6 Nations clash against France in Cardiff.

Phillips, who has won 82 caps, made his international debut in 2003 and was the Lions Test number nine against Australia last summer, will be on the bench for a game Wales must win to keep alive their title hopes.

Phillips makes way for full Test debutant Rhys Webb following Wales’ 26-3 drubbing by Ireland 11 days ago, while wing George North moves to outside centre, Liam Williams wears the number 11 shirt and fit-again lock Luke Charteris replaces Andrew Coombs.

Gatland is without the services of Scott Williams, Jonathan Davies and Ashley Beck because of injuries, so he faced an apparent choice between North and James Hook to feature alongside Roberts, but Hook remains on the bench.

Gatland has issued a stark warning to his players about places being on the line.

With the countdown beginning to gather pace towards World Cup 2015, Gatland knows any repeat of events in Dublin cannot be tolerated.

“I think when we look back, there were a number of players who had not played a lot of rugby, and that probably was a reflection of us not being as sharp as we were and a couple of performances were not to the level we expect,” he said.

“We’ve had a couple of conversations with a few players and said their performance was not good enough and not what we expected, they are aware of that. Hopefully, they will respond, because it is important now for us in terms of not just this competition, but for a lot of those players they’ve got to start thinking about the next 12 months and you start thinking about the World Cup, and if they don’t play well on Friday night it could be the last time they will play for Wales.”

It was an uncharacteristic display in so many different ways, leaving them to reflect on a first Six Nations away defeat since March 2011 and the reality that if they do not beat France then hopes of achieving an unprecedented Six Nations title hat-trick will effectively disappear.

“For us, it’s an opportunity to get back on the horse and to put the performance against Ireland behind us.”