daniel chigunweTHE difference is a mere 0.1 of a ranking point.
And rankings, in isolation, do not necessarily foretell the future.
Even so the news that Wales have slipped to 12th in World Rugby’s official pecking order, one place below Georgia, was a hugely symbolic moment.
After 14 Test defeats in succession, another unwanted record, it was a new low in a season increasingly full of them.
Faith seems to be ebbing away, too.
“It can’t carry on like this,” their erstwhile fly-half Dan Biggar said on ITV Sport last weekend.
“That looks like a team shot of belief and confidence.” Sam Warburton, who was leading Wales to Six Nations titles and grand slams not so long ago, was similarly downbeat as he sifted through the ashes of the defeat against Italy in Rome.
Warburton, for example, pointed out Wales had made 13 first-phase carries in the first half against the Azzurri.
For a total of one metre gained.
Talk about a statistic to sum up Wales’s predicament.
Their forwards are running head first into a brick wall and the wall is winning.
“There were times in that second half when I thought it was the most depressing and hopeless performance that I have seen from Wales,” said Gwyn Jones, another frustrated ex-Welsh skipper, on the BBC’s Scrum V.
At this point those with long memories will shake their heads sorrowfully and suggest alternative occasions when Wales have arguably been at a lower ebb.
Losing 96-13 in South Africa in 1998, for example, or being beaten at home by Western Samoa in 1991.
They eventually rebounded from those embarrassments and have won more Six Nations titles over the past 20 years — six — than England and Scotland combined.
But it is starting to feel like one of those cartoons where Wile E Coyote accelerates off a cliff and hangs briefly in midair until gravity takes over.
Wales are not so much drifting slowly downwards as nose-diving at a frightening rate.
Their next three games — at home against Ireland, away against Scotland and home against England — seem unlikely to cushion their descent.
It could get worse if the two-Test tour to Japan this summer yields further disappointment.
Defeats in Kitakyushu and Kobe could result in Wales dropping out of the world’s top dozen sides, condemning them to a potentially fiendish draw at the 2027 Rugby World Cup.
And on it goes. Down, down, deeper on down.
No one with an ounce of rugby soul wants to see Welsh rugby sink any lower.
There is still no finer place to be on an international weekend than inside the Principality Stadium, with the anthems soaring and passion (or something like it) dripping off the roof.
As Max Boyce told the Guardian this time last year: “The Six Nations needs a strong Welsh team. It’s a manifestation of the nation.” —
Online Reporter