No sign of Del Boy, a camel-hair coat or a second-hand BMW, but wide boys were to the fore in the big Ospreys v Scarlets United Rugby Championship derby on Saturday evening.
How good were the uncapped flyers Keelan Giles and Ryan Conbeer?
Operating on the margins, the pair of sharp movers showed wit and invention as they caused no end of problems for their opponents. Between them, they scored four tries, made six clean breaks and beat 10 defenders.
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They haven’t been alone in flying the flag for young and largely unheralded Welsh wing men of late. Theo Cabango and Rio Dyer, among others, have also had their moments in conjuring those flashes of inspiration that prompt spectators to spring from their seats and give their neck muscles a vigorous work-out to ensure they don’t miss any of the corner-flag action.
Let’s home in on Conbeer’s exploits at the Swansea.com Stadium. The 23-year-old isn’t built along Incredible Hulk lines. But he covers ground quickly and has a fair bit of tackle-busting power packed into his 5ft 10in, 13st 10lb frame.
And so to the 24th minute of the clash in Swansea when Conbeer collected the ball via fast hands from Jonathan Davies. Hitting full-throttle in the blink of an eye, he powered past Mat Protheroe in a moment the Osprey will not want to see played back, before surging over.
If his second touchdown confirmed his menace, the hosts will feel they should not have let him complete his hat-trick, but complete it he did. Receiving the ball near the touchline, the Saundersfoot speedster appeared hemmed in by opposition players. But he slipped past George North as if covered in grease, powered beyond Owen Watkin and managed to stretch across the line despite the attentions of Ethan Roots.
That is what good players do: create something out of nothing. It was a memorable score to crown an excellent personal contribution from the Scarlets’ hat-trick man.
On the other side of the pitch, Giles tore it up as well. Possibly, his return to form and prominence might just rank as one of the feelgood stories of the season. Turn back the clock six campaigns and he was Welsh rugby’s shooting star, fairly hurtling across the landscape as he helped himself to 14 tries in 19 games in his first senior season.
A Wales cap look sure to arrive sooner rather than later, but fate was having none of it, with two awful injuries torpedoing Giles’ progress. Throughout desperately challenging comeback attempts, the likeable youngster had the support of team-mates, and when he was last year named in an Ospreys matchday squad for the first time in 450 days, spontaneous cheers broke out from the rest of the group in training.
Slowly, he has been returning to fitness and form, not helped by the Ospreys missing so many players at various points which has hindered their attempts to play a wide game.
But he looked Stanley knife sharp against the Scarlets. He started by blue-lighting it across field to keep out Sam Costelow when a score had appeared certain. Then, minutes later, Giles hauled down Angus O’Brien with the try line in sight for the Scarlets full-back.
Let’s just say without those two interventions the story of the game could have been very different.
Giles also caught the eye with ball in hand. Hugging the touchline before devastatingly twisting infield, the one-time Welsh rugby boy wonder set up a try for Michael Collins before bagging a touchdown himself while having the intelligence to speed close to the posts to make the conversion attempt easier for Gareth Anscombe. And it was the little wing’s decoy run that created the one-on-one for Rhys Webb to send Owen Watkin across.
Negatives? Well, Giles will be annoyed to have missed a hit on Kieran Hardy near the end, but there was little else in the debit column.
“Excellent,” was the verdict of Sean Holley for Premier Sports. "There were high hopes in the Ospreys region for him. He made a wider Welsh squad at one point, don’t forget, but then had an horrific injury.
“But he's made a try-saving tackle here and he’s created and scored. He’s been fantastic.”
Two wings, then, with different styles.
Conbeer’s deceptive strength and hard running makes him difficult to shackle, while Giles is all pace and invention. On Saturday, in a game the Ospreys won 54-36, Wayne Pivac and his team of Wales selectors watched the duo shine.
The competition in the national back-three being what it is, they may have to be patient. But they have each put down markers.
South African teams have shown this season back-three men don’t have to be as wide as they are tall. They just have to be able to do a job in the fast lane.
On that front, there’s no doubting Conbeer nor Giles.
They are players to watch.
