Wales have made three changes as they bid to end their Guinness Six Nations losing streak against Ireland on Friday.<\/p>\n
Back-rower James Botham replaces the injured Taine Plumtree, with Alex Mann switching to blindside flanker to accommodate his Cardiff colleague.<\/p>\n
Fly-half Dan Edwards, who started the opening two games against England and France, comes in for the injured Sam Costelow.<\/p>\n
Ellis Mee also returns on the wing in place of Gabriel Hamer-Webb, who made his Test debut in the narrow home defeat to Scotland.<\/p>\n
Head coach Steve Tandy said: “There are a couple of enforced changes this week due to injury and then Ellis had played well in the opening couple of rounds, so we feel he deserves the opportunity again.<\/p>\n
“This week it\u2019s about backing up the performance against Scotland.<\/p>\n
“Going away from home is a different type of environment for our group, but the focus for us is really improving on what we did last game.<\/p>\n
“I thought the defence against Scotland was much improved, so we definitely want to double down on that going to Ireland.<\/p>\n
“You see how they keep the ball in possession, they play lots of passes so we know we\u2019re going to have to build and improve from the other week.”<\/p>\n
\n
Wales are without a Six Nations win for three years and have lost 14 consecutive matches in the championship.<\/p>\n
Ireland, who have bounced back from opening defeat to France by beating Italy and England, have not lost at home to Wales in the competition since 2012.<\/p>\n
Bath centre Louie Hennessey is in line to make his senior debut from the bench, while Adam Beard and Olly Cracknell return to the squad to provide forward cover.<\/p>\n
Tandy said: “Louie was unfortunate not to get his opportunity in the autumn, but he\u2019s trained really well.<\/p>\n
“He had a bit of a bump on his hand at the start of this campaign, but the way he\u2019s recovered and put performances in the training environment has been very impressive.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019re all excited to see Louie go out in Dublin.”<\/p>\n
Wales: L Rees-Zammit (Bristol), E Mee, E James, J Hawkins (all Scarlets), J Adams (Cardiff), D Edwards (Ospreys), T Williams (Gloucester); R Carre (Saracens), D Lake (Ospreys, capt), T Francis (Provence), D Jenkins (Exeter), B Carter (Dragons), A Mann, J Botham (both Cardiff), A Wainwright (Dragons).<\/p>\n
Replacements: R Elias (Scarlets), N Smith (Leicester), A Griffin (Bath), A Beard (Montpellier), O Cracknell (Leicester), K Hardy (Ospreys), J Evans (Harlequins), L Hennessey (Bath).<\/p>\n
Watch Ireland v Wales in the Six Nations on Friday from 7pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on the RT\u00c9 News App and on rte.ie\/sport. Listen to commentary on an extended Inside Sport on RT\u00c9 Radio 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wales have made three changes as they bid to end their Guinness Six Nations losing streak against Ireland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-328356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}