With the Grand Slam stashed away, and the ink drying on our Shaun's contract extension, there are plenty of reasons for Welsh fans to be happy. Winners are indisputably grinners.
There are two critical areas that Gatland and Edwards have focussed on to allow the World Cup whipping boys to become the sleek outfit that it became under Ryan Jones during the course of this campaign.
Firstly - intensity. The turning point of the whole 6 Nations was the fact that the pack refused to allow the English to score at the end of that first half at Twickenham. They had taken a fearful hammering, the strains of "Swing Low..." filled the stadium, but Ryan Jones' forwards fronted up. England's failure to score meant that the game was still on, and although the second half will be remembered as one of the great performances. Perhaps not by fans of Ian Balshaw...
Second - and step forward, Mr Edwards - defence. A side that leaked 13 tries in 4 matches in the World Cup gave away only 2 in the 6 Nations campaign. In all those games, in all that intensity, the Welsh side only missed a total of 25 tackles - a 95% completion rate. Each game showed that there was a stategy in place - the fanned out defence against the French, for example, with next to no one committed to rucks, meant that the men in red were impossible to beat on the outside. All this nullified the talents of Clerc and co., who in all honesty never looked like scoring.
