WRL Commonwealth Championships – Tuesday report

The Wales Rugby League Commonwealth Championship side have just completed their first full day in Australia in preparation for the tournament this Friday and Saturday.

Wales are competing in the 2018 Rugby League Commonwealth Championships In Moreton Bay, Queensland on February 23-24. This under-23 Nines tournament is officially endorsed by the Commonwealth Games Federation and is classed as an exhibition sport with the aim for it to become a full medal sport in 2026. Wales won bronze four years ago in Glasgow, and they will again take on Australia, the 2014 silver medallists, as well as Fiji and Scotland in Group A.

With this being their first day after travelling from Wales on Sunday/Monday, the players trained in the afternoon only and made full use of Redcliffe Dolphins RLFC’s training facilities for a field session based on defence.

Head coach Shane Eccles is delighted with not only the way his players have trained but how they’ve conducted themselves so far.

“They’ve been really good,” he said. “Last week in our training session in Warrington, we discussed some values and respect was one of them. The lads have been really good. Everywhere we’ve been, they’ve cleaned up after themselves and left everything tidy. We’ve already have good feedback about them and made a good impression.

“We worked a lot on defence work today, we wanted to do that early in the week to give the boys time to recover. They’ve worked really hard today.

“I think we’ll go well on Friday. Obviously we don’t know the opposition or a lot about who we’re playing against, so we’re going into the unknown here. But they’ve worked really hard, got to know each other and bonded really well as a group and everyone’s together all the time. I’m really looking forward to it.

For a full set of Rugby League Commonwealth Championship fixtures, please go to http://www.walesrugbyleague.co.uk/article/16294/fixture-times-announced-for-wales-in-the-commonwealth-championships. To purchase tickets, go to www.rugbyleague9smoretonbay.com.au.

Full 2018 squad profiles are available at  http://www.walesrugbyleague.co.uk/wales/commonwealth_nines_2018/commonweath_squad

For the rules of Rugby League Nines, and a full history of Wales’ involvement, please go to http://www.walesrugbyleague.co.uk/wrl_rep_teams/nines.

Go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i0QS-wEVRY&feature=youtu.be to watch highlights of the 2014 tournament.

Keep up to date with Wales’ progress on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/WalesRugbyLeague/ and Twitter at https://twitter.com/walesrugbyl.

WALES SQUAD