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Wales's line-up was youthful, to be sure, but might have been even more unfamiliar had not Colin Charvis and Robin McBryde been returned to the front line for what looked like a punitive tour of duty following the England defeat. "Other people control whether I have the job."Modern-day Test squads see more of each other than the average married couple, so there was scant excuse for a litany of dropped passes and, in Scotland's case, a worrying vulnerability at the ruck. But Hansen will be in place tomorrow to announce his 30 players for the World Cup, which starts for Wales six weeks today against Canada in Melbourne "I haven't worried about it all week," Hansen said. It is believed that Hansen's future as coach came under discussion by the Welsh Rugby Union's chief executive, David Moffett, last Monday.

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McGeechan stoically maintained that useful lessons can be learned in adversity, but this represented a step backwards for Scotland from the previous week's win over Italy.Wales, of course, were themselves on the rebound from their first XV's horrible capitulation against England's second string. Before the third quarter was out, Wales claimed the game's only try, through their second-row Michael Owen, and a late dropped goal from fly-half Ceri Sweeney settled it. The Scots' only tangible reward for all that domination was Brendan Laney's third penalty goal, in the 47th minute, shortly after Iestyn Harris had made it 15-6 to Wales. Nevertheless, the near-25,000 crowd of remaining daydream believers got what they wanted from the Welsh: a bit of heart, or hwyl, call it what you will.Goodness, they needed it, too, in a second half when, extraordinarily, the statistics showed that Scotland spent almost 34 minutes in Welsh territory. Following on from last Wednesday's more predictable rout of Romania, it staved off thoughts of Wales's coach Steve Hansen occupying the ejector seat on the plane to the World Cup, while making the pre-tournament planning of his Scotland counterpart, Ian McGeechan, that bit more irksome. It was, overall, a low-quality Test match, worthy of little comparison with anything served up by the world's leading unions in the prolonged run-up to Australia in October. Yet no one will get remotely carried away by this submersion of a Scotland XV who looked half-decent on paper, but played awfully on grass. After going 10 months and 11 matches without a victory, Wales have now won twice in a week.

Hickie then supported a break from Kelly to complete his hat-trick and went on to equal the Ireland record for tries in a match, set by Brian Robinson against Zimbabwe in 1991 and Keith Wood against the USA four years ago.A sparkling run from Kelly's replacement, Geordan Murphy, enabled the full-back, Girvan Dempsey, to bring up the half-century with his 10th try for Ireland. Shane Byrne was driven over within two minutes of the restart for his first try in 21 international appearances, and Hickie raced on to Humphreys' kick to pounce for his second. Their coach, John Kirwan, had hoped for a big improvement following his team's 47-15 defeat by Scotland, but they faded badly and have now conceded 108 points in eight days.They were only 9-6 behind after 39 minutes thanks to two penalties from their fullback Gert Peens, but they conceded two quick tries in first-half stoppage time to Kelly and Hickie. There were also encouraging perfomrances from a host of fringe candidates, notably the Leinster forwards Eric Miller and Leo Cullen.If yesterday's one-sided encounter keeps Ireland on track to make an impression down under, it leaves Italy's plans in disarray. Denis Hickie booked his autumn passage to Australia with a thrilling quartet of tries as Ireland brushed aside Italy in their World Cup warm-up match in Limerick. The home side shook off the lethargy which had marked a stop-start first half with a four-try purple patch which spanned 12 minutes around the interval.