Wales 16-54 New Zealand
by David Nicholson 
at the Millennium Stadium

NEW ZEALAND’S 68-year run of victories against Wales was continued in emphatic style on Saturday as the home side predictably went down to a heavy 16-54 defeat.

Ticket sales for what is usually the hottest ticket when the All Blacks are in town were sluggish as a greedy Wales Rugby Union scheduled the game outside the international window for release of players.

A mixture of injuries and the absence of the England-based players meant Wales were always going to be beaten, with the question only being by how much.

Captain Alun Wyn Jones had been bullish during the week and received a rapturous welcome as he ran out for a record-breaking 149 caps for Wales, beating All Black great Richie McCaw’s record.

But the patched-up Welsh side lost Jones within 20 minutes as his shoulder came off second best in a collision with Jordie Barrett.

After Jones’s miraculous recovery from a dislocated shoulder to join the British & Irish Lions tour in the summer, Wales coach Wayne Pivac was not ruling out his skipper’s recovery to face the Springboks on Saturday.

“Alun feels pretty good, and we will get him scanned as a precaution and see if he is fit for next week.”

Pivac took some consolation after the heavy defeat in his side being just 12 points behind with 20 minutes to go.

“At 28-16 with 18 minutes to go, we were happy with that. But we received the kick-off and conceded a penalty, which was disappointing.”

In fact, the All Blacks ran in four tries in that final 20 minutes, to put a shine on an impressive performance by the visitors.

All Black fly-half Beauden Barrett was celebrating 100 caps for the visitors and bookended his man-of-the-match performance with two intercept tries.

The first came in the opening minutes when he read a pass from his former New Zealand youth-team partner Gareth Anscombe and sprinted between the posts to open the scoring.

But the mercurial number 10 was lucky to remain on the pitch after he had deliberately knocked the ball on to foil a Welsh attack.

With the crowd screaming for a yellow card, French referee Mathieu Raynal awarded the home side a penalty but declined to show Barrett a card.

But just minutes before half time, Raynal sent All Black prop Nepo Laulala to the sin bin for a no-hands tackle on Ross Moriarty that caught the forward’s head with a shoulder.

The All Blacks were lucky the head shot was not awarded a red card, but TV match official Brian MacNeice and Raynal adjudged that Moriarty had lowered his head, which mitigated the offence.

The final 20 minutes of this mismatch had the All Blacks running riot with Harlem Globetrotter-style tries as the ball was moved hand-to-hand with bewildering speed.

Ominously for Italy next week, All Black coach Ian Foster said: “Some of our players have not played for four weeks, and you could see we were a bit rusty today.”

Wales coach Wayne Pivac took some consolation from the performance and singled out forward Taine Basham as his side’s man of the match in only his second international.

“The performance today will put us on the road to the 2023 World Cup,” Pivac said.

The home coach was also looking forward to his English-based players strengthening  the squad this week before Wales take on world champions South Africa on Saturday in Cardiff.

“We were excited with the squad we had, and we have got some guys coming into the squad next week. We will see who is ready for South Africa.”