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George North
George North, training for Wales in Qatar, is part of the squad which Warren Gatland intends to cut down in number after their World Cup warm-up with Ireland. Photograph: Huw Evans/Rex Shutterstock
George North, training for Wales in Qatar, is part of the squad which Warren Gatland intends to cut down in number after their World Cup warm-up with Ireland. Photograph: Huw Evans/Rex Shutterstock

Warren Gatland prepares to cut Wales to the World Cup chase

This article is more than 8 years old
Coach expects to reduce squad from 47 after match with Ireland
Younger players have chance to make their mark in warm-up game

After a month training “out of their comfort zone” at altitude in Switzerland and in the sweltering heat of Qatar the Wales squad will have it easier this week on returning to their base at the Vale of Glamorgan to prepare to face Ireland at the Millennium Stadium on Saturday, the first of three warm-up matches before the World Cup.

Warren Gatland intends to use this weekend to help him reduce his Wales squad from 47 to 36 or 38. Wales’s following warm-up game is a return against Ireland on Saturday 29 August, two days before the date when teams have to announce their 31-strong squads for the World Cup, which begins on 18 September.

“We will cut the squad after Saturday,” the Wales head coach says. “You want a number that is more manageable when you are focusing on the rugby side of the game: we took the players out of their comfort zone in Switzerland and Qatar, pushing them physically and mentally. We tried to make training harder than games, but from now it is more about rugby.”

Gatland will use Saturday’s warm-up against the Irish to rate the more junior members of the Welsh contingent. “A number of the younger players in the squad will have an opportunity against Ireland to show what they have done in the last few weeks and push their claims for selection for the squad,” the New Zealander added.

“Some are going to miss out and telling them is the hardest part of coaching, especially when they have put in as much as they have in the last month.”

Gatland will then select his leading players in the second match against Ireland and against Italy in Cardiff on 5 September. On Sunday 20 September they start their World Cup campaign against Uruguay at the Millennium Stadium, with the match against England at Twickenham the following Saturday.

“We face Fiji five days after playing England and there is no way the same team will be able to play the first three games of the World Cup,” Gatland says. “We have to consider how to mix and match to get the best out of the players and the warm-ups are a part of that. The biggest thing for us to consider is the split of the 31 for the tournament, 18 forwards and 13 backs or 17-14 and we feel we are in a good place.”

Richard Hibbard believes the pain of the July training will work to Wales’s advantage. “The work we did was mental,” Wales’s Lions hooker says. “The rooms in Doha had altitude machines so we were sleeping at 3,000 feet. It was a hard, gruelling month but all the players made serious gains and it was worth it. Bring on August.”

It will be the first of four warm-up matches for Ireland, whose head coach, Joe Schmidt, has not given an indication of the strength of the side he will be fielding in Cardiff, with games against Scotland, Wales again and England to come. “He is keeping us in the dark and on our toes,” said the second-row Ian Henderson. “It is making everyone work harder.”

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