Cardiff still no pushover

Press, 20 September 1978, Page 34

Cardiff still no pushover

NZPA staff correspondent London Mr Jack Gleeson probably does not need to be told, but the Cardiff Rugby Club — without Gareth Edwards and Gerald Davies — is proving it will still be no pushover for the All Blacks. Cardiff, which the All Blacks plays on October 21, beat Coventry, 76-9, at the week-end. The score included 15 tries, and Cardiff took its points total for just five games to 224 points. The club is already confident that its new half-back, Terry Holmes, will be a “new” Edwards. Holmes, behind the Welsh scrum for the second test against Australia this year, has scored 10 tries in his four appearances for the club this season.

“He floats super-long passes tantalisingly across menacing flank forwards and safely into Gareth Davies’ hands with audacious confidence,” John Billot wrote in the Cardiff “Western Mail.” Billot also called him as tough as teak.

Holmes and Davies — already widely picked as Phil Bennett’s successor if the Welsh captain chooses to go the way of Edwards and Gerald Davies — sung the Cardiff backs into action, performing off a platform provided by the strong Cardiff pack, headed by the England prop, Barry Nelmes, his England colleague, John Scott, at No. 8 and, of all things, a Dutch-

Canadian. Hans de Goede, the top lock. The Welsh coach. Mr John Dawes, was at the Arms Park for Coventry's humiliation and he sadi later that he did not view the retirement of Edwards and Davies as the beginning of the breakup of the Welsh side which has won the European “grand slam” in two of the last three seasons. “I have no reason to be less optimistic this year than I was last, year, such is the calabre of the players we have in Wales,” he said.

“When we lose player* of the quality of Gerald and Gareth, overnight they are irreplaceable, such is their stature in the game. Hopefully, we can in two or three games replace them. We certainly have the men who can fill their boots.” Mr Dawes makes no secret of the fact that his team's first priority this season is to beat the All Blacks in the test on November 11 “We have not beaten them for 25 years and it is time we did,” he said. Mr Dawes does admit to Welsh weaknesses, “last year’s achievements, great as they were, disguised certain weaknesses,” he said. “We can find tbe ball-users for the back division. But we need ball-winners up front — without them we cannot beat New Zealand.”

The Cardiff game is the second for the All Blacks, after the tour-opener against Cambridge University on October 18.