Bold is beautiful

BBC Wales Sport columnist Graham Thomas says that when the chips are down, Wales coach Graham Henry must rediscover his gambling instinct.

Nobody ever hoovered up the chips at the casinos of Las Vegas by hedging their bets.

Neither did Bill Gates hit the jackpot by playing it safe and investing his money in the postal service, or Mohammed Al Fayed earn fame, fortune and notoriety by buying Grimsby Town and a corner shop.

Sometimes you have to speculate to accumulate.

Graham Henry used to have the gambler's touch and for a time everything he punted on turned to gold.

The Wales coach was bold and adventurous and his hunches came up trumps with impressive regularity.

He plucked Chris Wyatt from the backwaters of Wales development tours and 'A' matches and made him one of the best second rows in Europe.

Bold

He took a prop from London Irish who could not hold down a regular place at his club and turned Peter Rogers into the best loose-head in the world.

Shane Williams: Discarded diamond

He found a backpacking Kiwi who had stopped off at Neath (someone else eventually found a birth certificate) and shined up Brett Sinkinson until he became a highly polished international openside.

Sinkinson and Rogers were the new faces in the side when Wales went to Paris two years ago and won there for the first time since 1975.

It was bold, brassy and successful and so was Henry.

But this season, somewhere along the line, he seemed to lose his nerve at the poker table.

Shane Williams, who had been another little diamond the season before, was mysteriously no longer worth the risk and then fullback Rhys Williams was withdrawn from the side to play England and replaced by the more robust Stephen Jones.

Suddenly, caution and conservatism seemed to be the order of the day.

Failings

The good news to come out of Henry's Wales team to face France in Paris this weekend is that the coach appears to have rediscovered his faith in the policy that bold is best - at least up to a point.

Williams is back at full-back to provide Wales with a counter-attacking threat in what is likely to be a fast, open game with stretched defences.

Jones returns to the bench where he can always be introduced as an attacking option - to take over at outside-half from Neil Jenkins - rather than as a solid-tackling last line of defence.

It could have been a more daring selection if Craig Morgan and Mark Jones had been picked as the Welsh wings, or if Dafydd James had been moved from the wing to outside centre in place of Mark Taylor who still appears to be struggling to rediscover his real form after injury.

After the side had been selected Morgan reported an injury, anyway, while Henry still feels there are defensive failings in both the young wide boys.

But the good news for Wales supporters is that Henry is once again taking about his own side's attacking strengths being the key, rather than about holding the opposition at bay.