Wales have kept Taulupe Faletau on the bench at Murrayfield, but Peter Jackson says it’s still a mystery why Rob Howley didn’t leave him there for far longer against England.
During the wash-up over the raging tidal wave of emotions unleashed in Cardiff last week, Wales found it necessary to deny that Ross Moriarty’s withdrawal had been pre-planned.
It remains as inexplicable now as it did then, all the more so because no Welsh No.8 had been subjected to an earlier substitution in a competitive international over the last five years. Moriarty disappeared after 52 minutes at a time when he had England on their hands and knees.
If anything all the more so in the absence of a coherent reason. Nobody can argue that it cost Wales the game because nobody knows but Moriarty’s premature removal clearly had a profound effect on what followed in his avoidable absence.
Interim head coach Rob Howley pointed out that his man had played for 70 minutes in Rome the previous week and left it at that, implying that the Gloucester blockbuster had carried a heavy load. It was too lame for words.
Had Moriarty been running close to empty, he had a strange way of showing it, generating a ferocity which repeatedly forced England to concede a ground at a time when Wales looked more than capable of winning with a bit of spare.
If only he had been granted at least ten more minutes, history might have taken a different twist.
Faletau ought to have been left sitting on the bench a while longer. If that sounds almost sacrilegious for a player of his stature, it would also have been thumping affirmation of Moriarty’s advent as a potential Lion in his own right.
In the absence of any coherent reasoning, Howley’s plan seems obvious in hindsight – to get Taulupe Faletau off the bench as soon after half-time as possible. Like any other plan drawn up before the action begins, it can be made redundant by events on the field of battle.
There were two good reasons why it had to be aborted or, at the very least, modified. Moriarty’s performance was so good it demanded to run its course. Second, Faletau had not appeared in a competitive match since Christmas Eve.
Pre-ordained substitutions always have to be reviewed as the circumstances dictate and on Saturday night they dictated that Moriarty stayed at his post. The players are not the only ones who have to react to what’s it front of them.
No amount of simulation in training can provide a player with match fitness. Faletau had not played for seven weeks, a period made longer still once the Welsh management decided against asking Bath to give him a pre-Six Nations run in the Anglo-Welsh Cup.
In an era when props rarely go beyond an hour and back rows are subjected to at least one alteration, Faletau is the supreme 80-minute man. Nobody in recent years can have gone the full distance as often as he has, not least because, as a Dragon, he never seemed to be handicapped by the human frailties afflicting others.
Over the course of starting 32 Tests for Wales since November 2014, Faletau finished 31 of them. He played all but 17 minutes of the other and would have gone to the end of that one as well had it been more important than a World Cup warm-up against Italy.
Faletau has been such an untouchable that perhaps it never dawned on anyone that someone else would come along in the same jersey and, against the meanest team in Europe, match the standard set by the man himself.
That needs to be recognised and the best way of rewarding Moriarty is to ensure he starts at Murrayfield this coming Saturday where he finished against England – at No. 8.
Peter Jackson’s column appears courtesy of The Rugby Paper.
