Good and bad display from Wales

Watching the SA v Wales match must have had Shaun Edwards in particular pulling his hair out, or it would have if he had any. Gatland too, to a lesser extent.

Wales neglected to tackle too often, and when they did tackle, they all too often allowed offloads over the advantage line, which the Bokke penalised. Wales also spilled the ball far too much, and conceded too many stupid penalties, particularly in the first half. Even more frustratingly it wasn't the new boys that were to blame, well not specially, everyone was guilty of knocking on, stupid penalties were mostly given up by experienced players.

When Wales managed to keep hold of the ball, they looked threatening, particularly when Stephen Jones was ignored in favour of Shane Williams as fly-half (a move that led to Wales' first try) and again when he was replaced by James Hook. Shane William's try was also well worked, and the rest of the world's wingers will look at the way he wrong-footed Habana with awe. Two minutes later his defence against the cross-kick will have impressed too.

In fairness, doing the core jobs - scrum and line-out - the forwards looked pretty good. There were a couple of poor line outs near the try line that Wales will rue, but overall the line-outs were pretty even (not bad when they've got a lock at 2.08m tall, and they take him off to replace him with Victor Matfield), and Wales really dominated at the scrums throughout.

Gatland and Edwards have a smaller job than the score of 43-17 might suggest. Edwards needs to remind his charges, old and new, how to tackle, and work out how to stop the offloads. Gatland needs to work out how to circumvent the team tackles from the Bokke when Wales do attack, and beat them until they don't drop the ball and don't give up stupid penalties. I'd suggest they might also go with Hook next week - S. Jones looked mostly solid, but made the backs look stolid. But, despite playing at altitude, Wales played until the end, complete with stupid penalties, but also a good gang-tackle on Habana to hold him up over the line and prevent him scoring a try.

I said losing closely wouldn't be a disgrace for Wales. This wasn't really close enough - Wales just gave up the ball far too often and led to their own downfall - but there were enough positive moments, and the scrum and line out worked well enough that it wasn't a disaster at least.