Another week, another record defeat. This time Wales went down by 33 points to South Africa, which is the worst beating they have ever had from the Springboks in a home game. It’s their 12th straight defeat, at the fag end of a year in which they have lost every single match they have played. The Welsh Rugby Union says it will hold the usual end-of-series review, although, given just how bad the results have been, this time it is going to bring in a couple of independent experts to help with it. You have to wonder exactly what anyone hopes to learn that isn’t already apparent.
So far as summaries go, there was a pretty good one in the match programme, where the WRU president, Terry Cobner, wrote: “We can’t question the players’ commitment but at this moment in time we are just not good enough.” Cobner’s prescription is that they need to “keep working as hard as we can till we turn this corner”.
