Warren Gatland broke his forwards’ morning by making five changes to the squad that lost to Ireland, with Alan Wyn Jones and Justin Tipuric completely ruled out.

Taulupe Faletau drops to the bench as Gatland selects Christ Tshiunza, Tommy Raffel and Jack Morgan on the back row, with the top two in line for their first Six Nations starts.

Despite former captain Jones confirming his good form earlier this week, Dafydd Jenkins takes the starting position to partner Adam Bird in the second row, while Rhys Davies prefers his Ospreys teammate on the bench.

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On the front row, Vin Jones and Dillon Lewis start alongside captain Ken Owens. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Ireland’s troubles in the group, Gatland opted for an unchanged back line that set the stage for a 34-10 defeat.

On the bench, Leon Brown acts as a hard-head and Rhys Patchell at left-back.

Stripping the starting line-up of the trio of Jones, Tipuric and Faletau, Gatland has made 342 appearances for Wales and 18 for the Lions, a significant change of pace for the highly experienced squad that opened their Six Nations campaign last weekend.

His replacements Jenkins, Tshiunza and Refhell have just a few matches between them, with Reffell the only one to start a Test match so far.

Having moved up to 8th, Morgan has only played in the position seven times, twice for the Ospreys in recent European Cup wins over Montpellier and Leicester and five times for the Under-20s in 2019.

Welsh: liam williams; Josh Adams, George North, Joe Hawkins, Rio Dyer; Dan Biggar, Tom Williams; Vin Jones, Ken Owens, Dillon Lewis, Adam Bird, Dafydd Jenkins, Christ Tshiunza, Tommy Raffel, Jack Morgan.

Substitutions: Scott Baldwin, Rhys Carre, Leon Brown, Rhys Davies, Taulupe Faletau, Rhys Webb, Rhys Patchell, Alex Cuthbert.

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Source: Wales Online