\n<\/p>\n
Some feel Ben Thomas was fortunate to avoid suspension after kicking out when held off the ball by Argentina flanker Pablo Matera last Sunday.<\/p>\n
A yellow card was deemed to be sufficient because the TMO could find no evidence of the centre making contact.<\/p>\n
Thomas was a key man at Cardiff under Wales attack coach Matt Sherratt and was at the heart of plenty of promising moments with ball in hand against the Pumas.<\/p>\n
He now has competition from Joe Hawkins, now with Scarlets after a spell at Exeter led to his international career being put on hold.<\/p>\n
The pair have similar dimensions – 6ft and around 15st – and the option of playing both is impacted by the need to give the diminutive Dan Edwards a proper crack at fly-half.<\/p>\n
Thomas has won 15 caps and starts his 14th straight Test alongside Max Llewellyn.<\/p>\n
“Ben is a quality player and that’s the way we want to play, having that second pair of hands,” said Tandy. “The vision helps Dan in how we want to play.<\/p>\n
“Ben has played consistently well for Cardiff, has done really, really well for Wales and there was a lot of interaction between 10 and 12, and with [scrum-half] Tomos Williams as well. There was lots of positivity.”<\/p>\n
The retention of Blair Murray, one of Wales’ bright sparks in a nightmare 2024-25, at full-back was another big talking point from the selection after Argentina ruled the air.<\/p>\n
“A few months ago people were talking about him as a potential British and Irish Lions full-back,” said Sherratt about the 5ft 8in Scarlets back.<\/p>\n
“He is so dangerous in broken field and is an instinctive player, so when he is back to winning the air he will show what he has got with his running game.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Some feel Ben Thomas was fortunate to avoid suspension after kicking out when held off the ball by Argentina flanker Pablo Matera last Sunday. A yellow card was deemed to be sufficient because the TMO could find no evidence of the centre making contact. Thomas was a key man at Cardiff under Wales attack coach<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}