{"id":436414,"date":"2026-01-25T11:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T11:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/436414\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T11:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T11:16:07","slug":"wales-rugby-five-talking-points-from-united-rugby-championship-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/436414\/","title":{"rendered":"Wales rugby: Five talking points from United Rugby Championship weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Never in doubt”, joked Nigel Davies after seeing his side snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.<\/a><\/p>\n

Scarlets had not beaten Ulster in a competitive match since November 2018 and right up until the 82nd minute the result looked to be heading the same way.<\/p>\n

But cue a stunning sweeping Sam Costelow pass and Ellis Mee’s 50-metre burst to the line and Scarlets fans were finally given something to celebrate.<\/p>\n

If there was any side that needed a win this weekend, it was Scarlets who had been rooted to the bottom of the URC table.<\/p>\n

“It was fantastic,” said Davies, who took over as interim director of rugby earlier this month.<\/p>\n

“We’ve asked these guys to be brave and relentless in their performance, that’s what they did.”<\/p>\n

The former member of Wales coaching staff admitted the second half was particularly tough.<\/p>\n

“We couldn’t get out of our 22 for 30 minutes but the boys were defensively heroic, that kept us in the game and gave us a chance at the end.<\/p>\n

“We’ll be humble with that result, there’s a long way to go and a lot to do, but I was a little lost for words because the values we’ve spoken about, they exhibited so strongly. <\/p>\n

“It makes us all proud.”<\/p>\n

The only dent in Scarlets’ victory was an injury concern to full-back Blair Murray who hobbled off in the second half with Davies unsure of the nature of the injury.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think it was too serious but he was struggling so we needed to make that change,” said Davies.<\/p>\n

Murray is set to link up with Wales’ Six Nations squad on Monday and will be assessed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Never in doubt”, joked Nigel Davies after seeing his side snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Scarlets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-436414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436414","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=436414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}