Harris pleased with Wales display

Wales coach Iestyn Harris was pleased with his side’s 60-22 win over Scotland which put them to the top of the Alitalia European Cup table on points difference from France following the first round of games.

Rhys Williams and Elliot Kear may have each scored a hat-trick of tries but it was Lee Briers who controlled things with his excellent kicking game, setting up a number of tries and converting eight times.

Mark Lennon, Lloyd White, Gareth Thomas, Jacob Emmitt and Jordan James also crossed for Wales, Ben Fisher and Andrew Henderson each got a brace for Scotland, three of them goaled by Danny Brough.

“It was pleasing to score so many points,” Harris said. “And I thought individually some players played extremely well today. We’ve got a few issues which we’ll deal with this week. We need to iron them out and try and get a better performance next week because we need to steadily improve to peak ourselves at the right time.

“I thought Rhys Williams performed really well. He looked dangerous whenever he had the ball and was very quick. Really really pleased for him. It’s good to score points and he played some good stuff as well.

“But I thought there were some good performances throughout the squad. I thought Lee kicked really well and moved the tempo of the game up and down when we needed to. That’s what he’s used to at Warrington so it certainly helped us.”

Wales now take on Ireland at The Gnoll in Neath next Sunday. Ireland lost 58-24 in France on Saturday and Harris knows that there could be a backlash.

“Ireland will be better for their game in France,” he said. “They’ll have had the opportunity to work on their game. We’ll have a chance to look at them and the two sides will be better prepared than they were for the first round.”