Welsh chief hails saviour Davies (From Richmond and Twickenham Times)

Welsh chief hails saviour Davies

12:00pm Friday 4th November 2011 in London Welsh By Damian Dolan

London Welsh head coach Lyn Jones hailed penalty hero Alex Davies as outstanding, but said he wasn’t a ssured of a starting slot at Doncaster Knights on Saturday.

Fly half Davies climbed off the bench to pot three penalties inside the last 12 minutes to give Welsh a 17-17 draw with Cornish Pirates at Old Deer Park.

The Exiles had trailed 14-0 at half time before a Rob Lewis try hauled them back in to the game.

They trailed by nine points at Davies’ introduction with 15 minutes to go, and his impact, along with that of replacement scrum half Jack Moates, was not lost on Jones.

“The measure of the person is to come on and under pressure, want to do things and execute them. Fair play to him [Davies], he was outstanding,” said the Old Deer Park chief.

“We’re very fortunate to have five excellent half backs in Gordon [Ross], Alex [Davies], Rob [Lewis], Ben [Stevenson] and Jack [Moates], who is going to be a real good player – an international of the future.

“I’m spoilt for choice. It doesn’t matter who plays really and the two came on and just gave us a little edge.”

Grasping a share of the spoils went some way to atone for last week’s last gasp defeat to Bristol – a game Welsh had led for 78 minutes.

And Jones was delighted with his side’s reponse.

“It’s always difficult to respond from such a gut wrenching experience and the players responded very well,” he added.

“It’s all about confidence and results like that against Bristol can kick that away from you.

“We didn’t play very well. There were silly basic errors and there wasn’t a great standard of attacking rugby from either side.

“What we did see was some good defensive displays. Too often in the Championship you get 39 points to 29 – there are a lot of errors in defence. It was a tight game, with no give or take on either side.”