Both teams won their opening weekend fixtures, however, England were clear favourites on this occasion having avoided defeat for the whole of 2016 and claiming last year's Grand Slam.<\/p>\n
It took just five minutes for Leigh Halfpenny<\/strong> to put Wales into the lead with a penalty from the half-way line. The following ten minutes saw England dominate possession and territory, and they would reap the rewards on the ten-minute mark as Ben Youngs bundled over to put England into the lead, however, Owen Farrell<\/strong> failed to add further points with the conversion.<\/p>\n The remainder of the half saw Wales play some stunning attacking rugby, but they couldn’t break down a dogged England defence, as skipper Alun Wyn Jones<\/strong> and Rhys Webb<\/strong> squandered chances with the try line at their mercy. Halfpenny<\/strong> added a further three points with his boot, putting Wales into a 6-5 lead.<\/p>\n The already scintillating atmosphere inside the stadium began to build as the Welsh crowd tried to spur on their side to a deserved try. They saw their calls answered five minutes before the break as winger Liam Williams<\/strong> cut through the England back line and score under the posts, to set up Halfpenny<\/strong> with a simple conversion to put Wales 13-5 up.<\/p>\n England immediately set out to put points on the board before half-time and they did exactly that through Farrell’s<\/strong> penalty meaning the teams went into the dressing room with the score at 13-8 to Wales.<\/p>\n The second half saw Wales continue to attack England’s defence with fast flowing rugby and they appeared to make an early breakthrough as Dan Bigger<\/strong> glided towards the England try line only for the referee to pull it back for a forward pass from Webb<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Wales put together a number of aggressive attacks and seemed certain to score a try but the England defence hung on, leading to Halfpenny<\/strong> settling for three points by electing to go for goal with his penalty. The penalty meant that England would need more than just a three points to level the scores and, with this in mind, they began to up their performance and threaten the Welsh defence.<\/p>\n Having gained some positive territory, Farrell<\/strong> elected to kick for goal from an England penalty, and successfully fired through the posts to bring the score to 16-14 to Wales and set up a grandstand finish to what had been a superb game of rugby.<\/p>\n For all of England’s effort, it seemed the Welsh defence would see the game out, but on 87 minutes Jonathon Davies’<\/strong> clearance kick found the arms of Mike Brown<\/strong> who’s counter attack was finished in the corner by winger Elliot Daily<\/strong> to put England into a three-point lead with minutes remaining.<\/p>\n The three-point margin would’ve left Wales with hope of a draw in the dying minutes, Farrell<\/strong>, however, kept his nerve and sent his conversion through the posts to make the score 21-16 to England.<\/p>\n England kept possession of the ball from kick off before sending it into the stands on the 80-minute mark to end this epic affair with a victory.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Both teams won their opening weekend fixtures, however, England were clear favourites on this occasion having avoided defeat for the whole of 2016 and claiming…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1216,"featured_media":906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4974,1],"tags":[163,210,554,218,555],"class_list":["post-907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport","category-uncategorised","tag-england","tag-rugby","tag-six-nations","tag-sport","tag-wales"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n