Wales’ Lloyd Williams has revealed how he and fellow scrum-half Gareth Davies have re-enacted the try that helped knock England out of the World Cup at the request of teammates.
Just minutes after coming on as a replacement wing, with Wales 25-18 behind, Williams collected a pass from centre Jamie Roberts and sprinted down the touchline before his perfectly-weighted cross-kick infield was gathered by Davies who went in for a spectacular try under the posts.
Dan Biggar converted to level the scores before the fly-half’s penalty sealed a last-ditch, 28-25 win over England in front of a stunned Twickenham crowd.
With England also losing to Australia, it meant that Wales’ old rivals became the first World Cup hosts to fail to get out of the group stage whereas the Welsh, despite last weekend’s 15-6 defeat by the Wallabies, will still face South Africa in a quarter-final at Twickenham on Saturday.
“It’s been mainly the wingers in the squad asking me about the cross kick, asking why I did it. It was the first thing that came to my head. My instinct kicked in,” Williams said at Wales’ Weybridge training base, near London, on Monday.
“I’ve watched it back a few times and me and Gareth Davies re-enacted it in training, it was funny. We’re hanging on to it a bit — he managed to pick it up again and dive on it.
“Beating England was a key victory for us just to reinforce our confidence. We all believed we could have won the game, but we had slipped behind,” he said.