Wales coach Wayne Pivac has revealed the two difficult phone calls he had to make on Monday night to tell Ross Moriarty and Rhys Carre they were not part of his autumn squad.
Both players were surprise omissions when Pivac publicly revealed his 35-man party on Tuesday. Carre has been in good form for Cardiff, while Moriarty is fit and firing and has long been a Wales regular.
Pivac revealed Carre has fallen short of conditioning requirements given to him ahead of the squad selection, telling the prop he has to start producing 60-minutes of high intensity rugby rather than fleeting eye-catching moments.
As for Moriarty, Pivac admitted the conversation had been a difficult one.
Pivac said: "They were two phone calls last night. Rhys went to South Africa and he was given a brief coming back as to what we expected from him in terms of his general conditioning, getting himself in the right shape to play international rugby and he's fallen short of that.
"So he's got a lot of hard work to do with his club. He's having some big moments in games, which is clear for everyone to see, but at Test level it's about 60 or 20 minutes of intense rugby and he hasn't quite reached the level of conditioning required to survive in our camps.
"In terms of Ross, that was a tough conversation because he's come back from injury. He's a hard-nosed player, we all know what he has done, 50-odd Test matches.
"But, again, this is the last opportunity for us to have a look at a few others. There are some quality players that are always going to miss out but it's not as if we've selected the squad with a view of whether Ross is good enough to play Test rugby, because we know he is.
"We need to learn more about others. He knows his target is the Six Nations and we've given him a couple of things in his game that we know he'll go away and work on."
Pivac has opted to recall in-form Ospreys loosehead Nicky Smith in favour of Carre, while Christ Tshiunza, Josh Macleod, Jac Morgan, Justin Tipuric, Tommy Reffell, Dan Lydiate and Taulupe Faletau are the back row choices ahead of Moriarty.
Read more:
Wales' autumn rugby squad in full as five uncapped players named and captain Dan Biggar out
Wales squad announcement live updates: Wayne Pivac names his players for autumn internationals
Revolutionary new rugby ball to be used in autumn internationals and change fan experience
