No news is good news for Wales

CARDIFF (Reuters) - Wales survived relatively unscathed from their bruising victory over Fiji, with no serious injuries to add to the already lengthy list, the team's kicking coach Neil Jenkins said on Friday.

No news is good news for Wales

(Reuters)





A ferocious Fiji side threw everything at Wales in a thrilling contest in Cardiff but Warren Gatland's exhausted troops repelled the Pacific islanders to earn a 23-10 victory in Pool A, just five days after a momentous win against England.

With a potential make-or-break decider on the cards against Australia at Twickenham on Oct. 10, the last thing Wales needed was any more casualties, having already been deprived of backs Leigh Halfpenny, Rhys Webb, Jonathan Davies, Scott Williams, Cory Allen and Hallam Amos.

There was a scare when kicking king Dan Biggar limped off towards the end of the Fiji game, but it was nothing more serious than cramp after two colossal performances in the space of a week.

"There are no serious injuries that I know of at this moment in time," Jenkins told a news conference. "The boys seem pretty good.

"Obviously there's going to be a lot of battered bodies. To play two test matches to the standard we played in five days is absolutely huge. It doesn't bare thinking about what these guys have gone through."

Now it's a case of refreshing both mind and body ahead of what will be another high-octane affair against Australia, regardless of how the Wallabies fare against England this weekend.

"There were a lot of boys cramping and different things last night," Jenkins said. "It was a brutal test match and there were a lot of boys tired with the short turnaround, but we got the job done. Now we can look forward to the next game."

Gatland says that the nine-day breather will give Wales some quality training time and allow them to work on their scrum, which struggled at times to contain Fiji's power.

"Hopefully that will freshen up the boys," he said. "I think we need to work on a bit of scrum stuff."





(Editing by David Goodman)


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