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Liam Williams column: Time for Wales to express themselves against Italy

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Published in Rugby
Friday, 04 December 2020 05:55

In his latest BBC Wales Sport column, Liam Williams explains why his entertainments committee has not been up to scratch and why Wales will look to get their back three going against Italy and try to finish 2020 with victory.

The message this week is to go out and express ourselves against Italy.

It has been a long eight weeks in camp with all the Covid-19 stuff and we have done well in that there have been no positive tests.

Alun Wyn Jones thanked us on that front because we have been good but we want to finish off with a positive performance on the field.

We know everything has not gone to plan this autumn but we want to end on a high.

It is the final week of camp. Training has been pretty short and sharp and enjoyable. There has also been some good news with the arrival of babies for Gethin Jenkins and Jake Ball.

We had a quiz night on Tuesday organised by Cory Hill and Dillon Lewis which I thought went well, but the entertainments committee has had a bit of stick for not doing much this campaign.

I have to take the criticism on the chin and improve on things.

We need to learn the lessons but all I would say is that it's not good to have the four dullest people - me, Dillon Lewis, Cory Hill and James Davies - on the committee.

In the first two weeks I was concentrating on getting fit after my foot injury. I have let the team down and I will learn the lessons for further campaigns.

On a personal note my lip has healed after I missed the England game following the 15 stitches I picked up against Georgia. I have been looking after it this week and it's all good.

I watched the England game at my fiancée's mum and dad's house. The boys played quite well but there are still a few things to work on. The line-out went better but the scrum was on the wrong side of some of the referee's calls.

The plan this weekend is to get the back three going. My job is to get the ball to the wings in plenty of space and time. If that happens I am sure we will score some points.

Josh Adams is a class finisher and Louis Rees-Zammit showed against England he has all the attributes to be world class. These are the times you need to give him international rugby so he can flourish.

George North is playing at outside centre which is a totally different role for him, although over the years he has covered 13 quite a bit.

I think it will be good for him to get his hands on the ball and he is an athlete who can slot in anywhere.

There has been plenty of conversation about the state of rugby with accusations of it being boring.

It is a tough one. Rugby is changing and the ball is kicked a lot more. Teams play it like a game of chess, trying to get field position and get the opposition to make a mistake. The term is trying to stay in the arm wrestle.

In the first 20 minutes against England, they kicked everything and maybe that's just to get a foothold in the game and wear us down.

As somebody who would like to think of himself as a counter-attacking full-back, it presents challenges.

Teams will kick longer these days and you don't want to be running it back if you are inside your own 22 or just outside unless it is clearly on and a couple of long passes could get you outside the opposition defence.

The only option sometimes is to kick and try to hit grass. It's my job to get rid of the ball safely or kick to compete, which I love doing if we get to a certain area of the field.

If it lands on halfway those are the opportunities to turn defence into attack, we have to take advantage of those chances.

There have not been many of those opportunities during this campaign. I love having my hands on the ball and if it is on, I am carrying it.

People talk about our attacking game and Wayne Pivac and Stephen Jones are trying to implement it.

We have not always had that firm foundation to attack from. The set-piece was good against Georgia but it has been not so good in other games. You can't play test match rugby successfully without a solid set-piece.

When you start attacking on the back foot and there's a mistake you can go from one knock-on and conceding a penalty or scrum to defending for 10 minutes.

We have been working hard on that over the last couple of weeks and showed glimpses against England.

It might take a bit of time to get back to set-piece dominance and that's when we will be on the front foot. That is when we will show what we can do and hopefully we can do that against Italy.

Like many people I will be glad to get 2020 over and done with.

It has been a strange year all around. I came back from the World Cup injured and missed most of the Six Nations and played just one game against England.

Then we had lockdown for months before rugby returned without fans, which is not the same. You don't get the same buzz.

Hopefully 2021 is a better year and we can go into the Six Nations with some confidence after beating Italy.

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