Wales opened their Nations Championship campaign with a bonus-point 39-24 win over Fiji at the Cardiff City Stadium, surviving an early onslaught from the visitors before pulling clear with two quick tries after half-time.

Here’s five things we learnt from the match:

Jac Morgan… back with a bang!

It had been a long wait for Jac Morgan’s first Test victory in Wales colours since the 2023 World Cup win over Australia, and his first cap since last autumn.

He made it count.

British and Irish Lion scored twice in the first half, both finished off the back of driving mauls, before topping the tackle count with 17 enormous hits and generally being a nuisance at every ruck.

It earned him the player of the match award, and on this evidence, Wales’ back row looks a far more settled and formidable unit with him back marshalling it.

Wales boss the breakdown to counter Fijian threat

With Fiji’s counter-attacking game thriving on quick ball, and Wales’ answer was to make life as uncomfortable as possible at the breakdown.

Morgan led the way with a string of turnovers and jackal penalties, while Aaron Wainwright chipped in both with ball in hand and in a crucial covering tackle to deny a certain Fijian try.

James Botham, who replaced Alex Mann who went off for an early head injury assessment, and then reappeared in the second period, added further disruption once back on the field alongside the recalled Mann.

Even scrum-half Tomos Williams got in on the act, winning a vital breakdown turnover in the 76th minute as Wales squeezed the life out of Fiji’s momentum late on.

It wasn’t one-way traffic – Fiji’s Temo Mayanavanua had a big say of his own at the ruck in the first half – but over 80 minutes Wales’ work over the ball was a genuine platform for the win.

Wales win the clash of styles

This was billed, and played out, as a genuine collision of rugby philosophies.

Fiji were at their free-running, offloading best for long periods, particularly in a first half in which they forced Wales into more than 30 missed tackles and repeatedly broke the gain line with pace, footwork and audacious handling.

Wales, by contrast, leaned almost entirely on their set-piece: three of their six tries came from the driving maul, with the scrum also functioning as a genuine attacking weapon and source of penalties.

That contrast was there for all to see at the break, when the sides were locked together at 10-10 despite Fiji’s territorial and attacking dominance – a score line that flattered Wales given how one-sided the first 40 minutes had felt.

Forwards coach Danny Wilson earns his corn

If one area of the Welsh performance summed up the value of specialist coaching, it was the set-piece.

Forwards coach Danny Wilson will have taken huge satisfaction from a lineout that functioned as the primary source of go-forward ball, feeding a driving maul that produced three tries: two for Morgan and one for replacement hooker Ryan Elias.

The scrum, meanwhile, was equally influential: Rhys Carré and Dillon Lewis got the better of their opposite numbers early on, winning penalties and eventually a try of their own from a five-metre platform, before the bench trio of Elias, Nicky Smith and debutant Ben Warren kept that dominance going into the closing stages.

Fiji simply had no answer to Wales’ driving maul all afternoon, and that set-piece control was arguably the single biggest factor in the result.

Welsh defence and discipline on point

As a first couple of games go, the Barbarians and Fiji back-to-back could not be much harder to plan for as a defence coach.

New man Peter Murchie will have mixed emotions to sift through, but the overall picture was a positive one for his first campaign in as Wales defence coach.

His charges missed a startling number of tackles in the first half as Fiji cut through them at will, yet somehow held the score line to parity at the break with some resilient scramble defence and then tightened up considerably after the interval, restricting the Flying Fijians to just 14 second-half points.

Discipline was the more emphatic story: Wales conceded only six penalties to Fiji’s 13, a gulf that allowed Steve Tandy’s side to dictate territory and field position for long spells, especially at the scrum.

There’s clearly work still to do on the underlying tackle numbers, but the character to hold firm under heavy early pressure, allied to markedly better discipline than their opponents, gave Wales the platform to grind out the win.

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