Tom Shanklin has urged Warren Gatland to select Louis Rees-Zammit at full-back against Italy this weekend to give Wales’ attacking game a much-needed boost.
The double Grand Slam winner believes playing the Gloucester winger at 15 would give him more opportunities to demonstrate his huge threat with ball in hand.
It was a move Wayne Pivac experimented with during the autumn internationals and Shanklin would like to see Gatland follow suit.
“Our best players need the ball," said the 70-cap former centre. "Louis is our most dangerous player and our wings aren’t really getting much ball at the moment.
“When he played at 15 in the autumn, he looked good. His first option is to run. He’s powerful, he breaks tackles. His first catch against Argentina, he broke a tackle and we were on the front foot straight away.
“You want to see the ball in his hands as much as possible. So many opportunities come the way of the full-back these days from counter-attack, off kick-return and turnover ball.
“We set up with a defensive full-back against England. That’s fine, but we are not scoring any tries. We are averaging one try a game.
“I would go for Louis at 15 because of what he gives us in terms of attacking shape and individual threat one-on-one, a bit like [Ange] Capuozzo.
“We need to start looking at future full-backs. Liam Wiliams is 32 next month, Leigh Halfpenny is 34. At some stage, we are going to have to look at the new generation and who is going to be the next 15.”
Shanklin would go for Josh Adams and Rio Dyer on the wings alongside Rees-Zammit in the back three for the trip to Rome.
As for the rest of the back-line, he says: “I would stick with Owen Williams at 10. We know what Dan Biggar does. We have seen it for the last 12 years. We are going to have to look at a number two and someone is going to have to get some game-time.
“I am not quite sure it works with Tomos Williams and Dan Biggar. I would go with Tomos alongside Owen at half-back.
“Then I would stick with Joe Hawkins and Mason Grady in the centre. We saw Mason with one run in the wide channels against England and he just ghosted through and Wales got on the front foot. Apart from that, they were just using him as a battering ram, which he can be because he is so big, but there is so much more to his game. He is far better in those wider channels. Give him the ball with a bit of space and say go for it because he is a specimen and we have seen what he can do when he makes breaks.”
Shanklin knows what it’s like to lose with Wales out in Rome, having been in the teams defeated by the Azzurri in 2003 and 2007.
Comparing those times to now, he says: “Italy were fairly new to the Six Nations back in 2003 and we would have gone in as favourites, 100 per cent. You are still Wales, you are still a tier one nation and rugby has been in your blood forever. We are part of history with rugby.
“Similarly in 2007 we would have gone in as favourites. Even though we weren’t playing particularly well we still had quality players all over the park.
“We just lacked a bit of identity and a bit of a blueprint of how we wanted to play. I look at that period and we were like a BaaBaas team that had come together and sometimes that just doesn’t work. You need some kind of blueprint of how you are going to play and what you are going to do. I look back then and we just went in with no real game-plan.
“The big difference now is I think Italy would be most people’s favourites for this weekend. I think they might just edge it with the bookies given what we have seen on the field.
“I’ve seen far more positives from them in the first three games than I have from Wales. That’s why I say they would be slight favourites.
“If you took all our players and rated them, we would probably be better than Italy in terms of personnel, but we are not as a collective group. You can see that in the way we play.
“In contrast, Italy are playing with quite a lot of ambition and creativity. They are extremely positive in their attack and their skill level is hugely increased. I’ve seen a massive change from them.”
Shanklin continued: “With Wales, I thought there was a slight improvement against England, but we still don’t look like a team that knows what to do with ball in hand and that’s why we are kicking it all the time. That’s why we are playing low-risk rugby.
“We are kicking the ball and trying to force teams into mistakes. I just don’t think that’s the right mentality anymore. You need to win games differently.
“We can’t go into every match with that game-plan. It works if we are South Africa, but we just don’t have those big destructive carriers that are going to win one-on-one collisions. We are not like that, we have to start looking at different ways in which we can attack teams. One on one, it’s just not going to cut it.
“We are not a team that can grind out results anymore. The game has moved on. We need to adapt.
“It was a real pragmatic approach against England which is going to put people off watching Wales. It’s all about the game-plan. It’s what they are getting told to do.
"We have got a team of individuals out there, but we are not playing to their strengths. We still want to kick the ball as much as we can and we still want to hit short off set-piece. That’s not our strength. Our strength is to play a little bit wider.
“Our biggest worry is our inability to attack. We just don’t look like we can break the line.
“Josh Adams is one of the best wingers in the northern hemisphere, but he’s just not getting the opportunities. We are not giving our back three any real good chances to attack because we are so insistent on playing low-risk rugby and using forwards round the corners.”
As for his prediction for this weekend, Shanklin says: “Wales are so low in confidence right now and a team that’s struggling to have an identity of how it's going to attack.
“With everything going on in Welsh rugby, with pay cuts, jobs being lost, it's bound to have a knock-on effect to the players. They have been consumed by it for the last couple of months. I can really see Italy winning, but then I can also see Wales just squeezing a result. It’s so difficult to call.”
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