Jones fit to fight the Pumas
X-ray reveals no broken thumb
Wales captain Duncan Jones has received good news about the hand injury which forced him to leave the field during the narrow 27-25 defeat to Argentina in Puerto Madryn on Sunday – scan results today revealed his thumb is not broken.
However, that piece of good news was tempered by the news that Matthew Watkins faces a further wait to find out if he will be fit to play.
As a result of that, and of other assorted knocks and niggles, Wales will not now name their team until Wednesday, instead of Tuesday as initially planned.
"Duncan [Jones] had an x-ray on Sunday night to examine the injury which forced him to leave the field against the Pumas," said Wales team physio Mark Davies.
"The results of the scan tell us that the thumb is sprained and not broken, so the prediction is now that the injury will settle down in due course and that Duncan will be available for selection this Saturday.
"Matthew [Watkins] strained his lower back during the course of the match and was unable to continue on Saturday," added Davies.
"We will monitor his condition over the next couple of days."
Meanwhile, coach Gareth Jenkins said he would not be telling his players to curb their aggression despite the yellow cards meted out to flanker Gavin Thomas and number eight Alix Popham on Sunday.
The coach said his players did well to stand up to intimidation, and helped his team run their opponents close.
"You can take a view that if you are going to front up, be physical and put your body on the line, then you are always going to play on the edge throughout the game," he said to the Western Mail.
"There were a couple of our players of whom the referee took that view, but if we hadn't played on the edge then we wouldn't have had a performance.
"That we nearly pulled off a win in the first Test is a credit to the whole squad."
"We have shown great character and great honesty but, more than that, we took a game-plan into the match on Sunday," he added.
"We worked hard on it and we came close to getting a result.
"We made 16 line breaks and showed initiative and invention. We took the game to Argentina and we know we could have won."
