Hansen looks at the positives

Wales 27 Tonga 20

It was an unconvincing, disappointing performance but – given the horror run Wales have been on through this last year – coach Steve Hansen took the win over Tonga and tonight played up the positives.

Few of them, though, related to the actual display in the Australian capital where the Welsh were outscored three tries to two by a Tongan side vastly improved from their opening defeat to Italy.

By Hansen’s own admission Wales had regressed since their comfortable win over Canada, and were saved by a late cameo from replacement Martyn Williams, some desperate defence at the death and the wayward boot of Tongan fly-half Pierre Hola.

Gareth Cooper scored an opportunist’s try and Stephen Jones finished with 14 points, but there were few individually impressive elements.

Instead, Hansen highlighted the overall importance to his players’ psyche of the result, of winning a game which, even a few months ago, Wales would have lost.

“I don’t think there was a drop in confidence (when things were going wrong), I just think that one or two poor decisions and they started looking at themselves,” said Hansen on his players’ often timid display.

“But that is part of growing as a rugby player. A lot of them have come through some bad times.

“That is Stephen Jones’ first win in a Wales jersey since November and there are a few other people like that.

“When you put yourselves under pressure, you start to look inwardly.”

The reason for the nervous introspection was that each time Wales pulled clear they allowed

Tonga to hit back, leaving the score a tantalising 14-10 at half-time before setting up a thrilling finale.

“Right near the end I was thinking ’Here we go’,” admitted Hansen.

“The sad thing was that when we got a bit of a buffer we lost concentration and let them back into the game.

“That is something we have to go away and work on. We are side that, after a success, are at our most dangerous in terms of getting ahead of ourselves.

“It is a continually growing lesson and hopefully one we’ll take on board. But every time we got under pressure we went back and scored points.”

When Cooper stole round the blindside of a scrum and dashed over untouched in the 25th minute, Wales led 11-3.

But with handling conditions tricky, Hola took the gamble to stab a kick through to Wales fullback Rhys Williams who fumbled under pressure and the Tongan fly-half pulled a try back.

Suddenly it was 11-10.

Jones landed two further penalties, one either side of half-time, before hitting a woeful patch to leave Tonga firmly in touch.

Even when Martyn Williams joined the exclusive club of loose-forwards to have dropped a goal in a Test match, to leave Wales two scores up, Tonga went down the other end and executed a sensational driving maul.

In the middle of it was captain Benhur Kivalu and the difference was five points, only for Williams to then score in the corner.

And yet, once again Tonga came back but only two minutes remained when prop Heamani Lavaka touched down.

Hola, who finished with a telling four misses from six efforts, failed to add the afters and Tonga could not break Wales’ desperation defence for a fourth time.

It left Tonga with a losing bonus, but coach Jim Love felt his side had let Wales off the hook.

“I think there were too many mistakes. I believed we had the game but didn’t take the opportunities,” he said.

“There were a lot of little mistakes. It would have been good if we could have played this way against Italy.”

At the very least, Wales now know that one more victory will secure them a place in the last eight of the World Cup.

But the hardy Welsh supporters, who braved the teeming Canberra rain in their numbers this evening, will wait nervously to see if their side have it in them to beat Italy.

Hansen, though, had confident words for the Welshmen ahead of what could be the decisive Pool D match, given New Zealand are likely to romp through in first place.

“It wasn’t a top drawer performance. In the past when we haven’t had a top drawer performance it hasn’t been good enough to win,” said Hansen.

“That tells me something, that we have improved. If we can play poorly and win it’s a big step.

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out that if we play like that we won’t win against Italy (in their crucial next Pool D fixture).

“But the good thing is I know we can step it up. There is no point panicking and dropping our heads about it.”