The Wales head coach, Warren Gatland, has made 13 changes to his starting XV for the Pool C match against Portugal on Saturday after their bruising opening win against Fiji.
The Gloucester wing Louis Rees-Zammit and the No 8 Taulupe Faletau are the only players retained from the starting lineup on Sunday in Bordeaux. Dewi Lake, the hooker, will captain his country for the second time in an all-new front row alongside the props Nicky Smith and Dillon Lewis.
Tomos Williams wins his 50th international cap at scrum-half with Gareth Anscombe starting at fly-half, while the centre pairing of Johnny Williams and Mason Grady both make their World Cup debuts in Nice, along with Lake and the lock forward Christ Tshiunza.
Exeter’s Tshiunza makes his first Wales start in the second row alongside his clubmate Dafydd Jenkins. Dan Lydiate (No 6) and Tommy Reffell (No 7) will pack down alongside Faletau in the back row while Rio Dyer starts on the wing after coming off the bench against Fiji. The veteran back Leigh Halfpenny, who last month became the ninth Welsh player to reach 100 caps, will play at full-back. France 2023 is Halfpenny’s third World Cup after he was also selected by Gatland in 2011 and 2019; he was ruled out of the 2015 tournament in England by a knee injury.
Ryan Elias, Corey Domachowski, Tomas Francis, Adam Beard, Taine Basham, Gareth Davies, Sam Costelow and Josh Adams make up the replacements’ bench.
Eight days after the meeting with Portugal, Wales face a potentially decisive showdown against Eddie Jones’s Australia in Lyon, and will then have a two-week break before their final pool match against Georgia in Nantes on 7 October.
Meanwhile, No 1-ranked Ireland are hopeful the No 8 Jack Conan will be fit for their Pool B match against South Africa in Paris a week on Saturday. The Leinster back-row sustained a foot injury in their warm-up victory against Italy in Dublin last month, but has now returned to light training.
The team manager, Mick Kearney, said on Wednesday: “[It was a] very good training session today and everybody came through that really well. Jack was out running, which was a real positive.
“While Saturday [against Tonga] will come a little bit early for him, I think the signs are really positive in terms of being able to train fully next week, and hopefully he will be available for South Africa.”
