Gatland content with Portugal bonus point World Cup victory

Wales’ second match in World Cup Pool C proved to be a trickier affair than many had anticipated with Gatland’s men made to work hard for their last-gasp bonus point victory. 

An early try from wing Louis Rees Zammit looked to have put the Welsh on their way after a sluggish opening period, but it would take until first-half stoppage time before captain Dewi Lake crossed over from close range to further extend the lead. 

In an error-strewn match, where Wales were by no means at their best man of the match Jac Morgan, a late replacement in the team made sure the win would be confirmed minutes after the break before Portugal mustered a surprise score of their own through Back-row Nicholas Martins. 

Joy would turn to despair for the Portuguese with the late dismissal of Vincent Pinto for a high tackle on Wales replacement Josh Adams giving Gatland’s side the impetus of an extra man into the closing stages, 

It would take though until the very last phase of play to secure the all-important bonus point with Toby Falateu’s dramatic try three minutes into the red on the clock, providing Gatland and the whole of Wales a sigh of relief. 

“We are happy with getting the bonus point. If someone said to us that we’d have ten points from the first two games, we would have been pretty happy with that,” commented Gatland. 

“It was so important for us to get that in the end. The one that was ruled as a non-try against Tom Francis I’m looking at it going he’s just stopped still, where is he supposed to go?  

“That was a little frustrating, but we regrouped, ran hard and won those collisions. That’s probably where we looked most dangerous at times. 

“With Taulupe [Faletau], the more game time he has and with a run of games he gets better. After last week, even with the short turnaround we wanted to give him some more rugby and I thought he did some really good things today and will continue to get better with more fitness. 

“He has worked hard, made some good decisions with a big tackle and obviously scored that try at the end of the game. Not many people would have been able to score that from that situation. 

“There were a few aspects to look at today, maybe we tried to play a bit too much rugby early on instead of playing it territorially or directly.  

“Some of the players haven’t that that much rugby together and making that many changes was always going to be needed with the short turnaround. It is though job done, we have got the five points.” 

Gatland also singled out praise for joint captain Morgan’s man-of-the-match performance after the Osprey’s back-row only found out an hour before kick-off about his involvement in the game. 

“It was a decision we only made just before kick-off,” continued Gatland.  

“Tommy [Reffell] said his calf was a bit tight. If he had pulled that, his World Cup would have been over. We then had to put Jac in with limited preparation. I thought he was good. 

“I thought Portugal played well tonight and showed a lot of enterprise. The other night watching Uruguay [against France] you could argue they were unlucky in a few situations as well. It is only got to be good for the game. 

“They had thrown everything at us in that first-half and we didn’t really help ourselves in managing that. It is good though that we have given everyone in the squad an opportunity to play some rugby. 

“We have had a couple of calls that went against us in terms of knock-on’s which didn’t help in momentum, but we were much better at controlling the end of the game [than against Fiji]. 

“We now have a little bit more time now in preparation ahead of Australia where we can start to focus on and look forward to the game.” 

[Lead image: Welsh Rugby Union]