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Wales have suffered a double late blow with Liam Williams and Dafydd Jenkins ruled out of the Six Nations match against Italy on Saturday.<\/b><\/p>\n
Blair Murray and Freddie Thomas will now start the key fixture at Stadio Olimpico.<\/p>\n
It is a major blow for Warren Gatland to lose his most experienced back and one of his best performing forwards for such an important game.<\/p>\n
Veteran full-back Williams had been struggling with a knee injury sustained against France in the opening game and missed training on Friday.<\/p>\n
Scarlets wing Murray – who played all three Tests during the autumn, including at full-back against South Africa – wins only his fifth cap.<\/p>\n
Jenkins, who made the second most tackles of any player in the Six Nations last week, has been ruled out through illness.<\/p>\n
Gloucester lock Thomas makes his first Wales start having made his debut against South Africa in November.<\/p>\n
His Kingsholm club-mate Josh Hathaway and Cardiff lock Teddy Williams have been promoted to the bench.<\/p>\n
Wales lost 43-0 against France in Paris in their opening Six Nations game, heightening the problems for Gatland’s squad after 13 consecutive Test defeats.<\/p>\n
Italy:<\/b> 15-Allan; 14-Capuozzo, 13-Brex, 12-Menoncello, 11-Ioane; 10-P Garbisi, 9-Page-Relo; 1-Fischetti, 2-Nicotera, 3-Ferrari, 4-N Cannone, 5-Ruzza, 6-Negri, 7-Lamaro (capt), 8-L Cannone.<\/p>\n
Replacements:<\/i> 16-Lucchesi, 17-Rizzoli, 18-Riccioni, 19-Lamb, 20-Zuliani, 21-Vintcent, 22-A Garbisi, 23-Trulla.<\/p>\n
Wales:<\/b> 15-L. Williams; 14-Rogers, 13-Tompkins, 12-James, 11-Adams; 10-B Thomas, 9-T. Williams; 1-G. Thomas, 2-Lloyd, 3-H. Thomas, 4-Rowlands, 5- F. Thomas, 6-Botham, 7-Morgan (capt), 8-Faletau.<\/p>\n
Replacements:<\/i> 16-Dee, 17-Smith, 18-Assiratti, 19-T. Williams, 20-Wainwright, 21-R. Williams, 22-Edwards, 23-Hatahaway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wales have suffered a double late blow with Liam Williams and Dafydd Jenkins ruled out of the Six Nations match against Italy on Saturday. Blair Murray and Freddie Thomas will now start the key fixture at Stadio Olimpico. It is a major blow for Warren Gatland to lose his most experienced back and one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10378,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10376\/revisions\/10378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}