A Wales men\u2019s crowd came away with the pride of a win at home for the first time in more than two years as the hosts beat Japan but the overriding feeling was of relief. The Welsh performance was miles off of what is expected on these shores. Sloppy attack, squandered opportunities and a 20-minute red card for Josh Adams almost gifted the win to Eddie Jones\u2019 team but that won\u2019t be remembered in years to come, what will be is Jarrod Evans\u2019 name.<\/p>\n
It was his last-play-of-the-game penalty which won the game for Wales, the first in the head coach Steve Tandy\u2019s reign. The roar that followed has to be up there with one of the loudest this stadium has heard. It was the replacement\u2019s only kick at goal of the game and he had nerves of steel to seal the victory.<\/p>\n
Jones had said he wanted his team to make the pressure Wales are under feel like a \u201cburden\u201d and for a large portion of the game they did that with brave attack. But a few tries went begging for them too, as well as a few penalty kick misses.<\/p>\n
There were four cards in the game \u2013 Adams\u2019 red and three yellow cards for Japan. Jones, who joked the last-minute loss made him want to \u201ckill someone\u201d, added he thought all of those decisions were \u201cfarcical\u201d. \u201cI think we are absolutely ruining the game of rugby,\u201d Jones said. \u201cI don\u2019t think any of the actions were intentional, I don\u2019t think they deserved to be sin binned. Any of them. I think we have to have a more sensible approach to the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is going to be contact with the head, unless it is reckless which I didn\u2019t see any of those actions being. A penalty is fair enough \u2026 The game of rugby is about having 15 players on the field and I think World Rugby should be looking at this very closely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quick GuideWales v Japan teamsShow<\/p>\n
Wales: Murray; Rees-Zammit, Llewellyn, B Thomas, Adams (Tompkins 60); Edwards (Evans 79), T Williams; Smith (Carre 48), Lake (Belcher 77), Griffin (Assiratti 48), D Jenkins (F Thomas 79), Beard, Wainwright (Plumtree 48), Mann, Cracknell. <\/p>\n
Tries: Edwards, Rees-Zammit, Tompkins. Cons: Edwards (3).\u00a0Pen: Evans<\/p>\n
Red card: Adams (40)
Japan: Yazaki; Ishida (Ueda 78), Riley, Lawrence, Osadal; Lee (Komura 77), Saito; Kobayashi (Furuhata 77), Sato, Tamefusa (Takeuchi 49), Uluiviti (Hockings 49), Dearns (capt), Cornelsen, Shimokawa (Paul 69), Makisi. <\/p>\n
Tries: Ishida, Makisi Cons: Lee (2). Pens: Lee (3). Sin-bin: Uluiviti (25), Makisi (29), Hockings (80)
Referee: Matthew Carley (Eng).\u00a0Attendance: 61,324<\/p>\n
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It was a must-win for Wales as if they had lost they would have been leapfrogged by the visitors in the world rankings. That would have put Wales on the more difficult side of the Rugby World Cup draw, on 3 December, as they would have dropped to 13th. So this game was a must win but they had to do it without captain Jac Morgan, who was ruled out with a dislocated shoulder.<\/p>\n
The home side were bolstered by Louis Rees-Zammit, who made his first start and scored his first international try since returning to rugby. The hope of Wales finally winning at home was palpable before kick-off with the atmosphere absolutely electric. The lights went down but a red undertone remained with a pyrotechnics show making the Principality feel like a cauldron.<\/p>\n
Quick GuideSouth Africa shrug off early red to sink ItalyShow<\/p>\n
South Africa shrugged off a red card for the second successive match to power to a 32-14 win over an Italy side that threw away a golden opportunity to earn a rare win over the Springboks in Turin on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Franco Mostert was shown a red card after 11 minutes but Italy\u00a0failed to make their extra man count, with Paolo Garbisi guilty of\u00a0missing kickable penalties.<\/p>\n
Tries from Marco van Staden, Morn\u00e9 van den Berg, Grant Williams and\u00a0Ethan Hooker earned South Africa a comfortable win after\u00a0they withstood enormous early pressure from Italy, who scored one\u00a0second-half try through Ange Capuozzo. Guardian sport<\/p>\n
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A cacophony of noise flooded the stadium as Dan Edwards darted over but thanks to the skill of Japan\u2019s Faulua Makisi it was the visitors next putting pressure on. The No 8 was instrumental in two dangerous attacks which led to a try by Kippei Ishida. Japan were the better side in the first half but things took a turn as they were handed two yellow cards for Epineri Uluiviti and Makisi. But despite being depleted, Japan did not concede and Wales had their own card to deal with as Adams\u2019 illegal clear-out was upgraded to a red card after a bunker review.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The back and forth nature of the encounter was nail-biting but Evans\u2019 penalty sealed the result and fans cheered like steam finally escaping a bubbling pot.<\/p>\n Tandy said of Evans\u2019 kick: \u201cI couldn\u2019t watch it, I hid around the side [of the coaching box]. I could see the crowd, I could see Jarrod going to take the kick but I couldn\u2019t see the posts. But then you just hear the eruption from the support. Fair play to Jarrod, that kick is some kick under pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n Wales are back to winning ways at home and will look to bring more victories to the Principality. But with two huge challenges coming against New Zealand and South Africa, and their only wins in their last 21 Tests coming against Japan, it is likely to be 2026 before fans see Wales win again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Wales men\u2019s crowd came away with the pride of a win at home for the first time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-286983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}