After starting at 10 for both the France and Italy game, Ben Thomas insisted that being back at his beloved inside centre position was the reason for his standout performance against Ireland last Saturday at Principality Stadium.
Thomas never looked likely in the 10 jersey to cause the opposition many problems but with interim head coach, Matt Sherratt coming into the Welsh setup the 26-year-old has hailed how much of an impact Sherratt has made.
In just three training sessions after taking over the head coach role for the remainder of the 2025 Guinness Six Nations, the Cardiff player looked more comfortable and that was telling with the way Wales’ attack looked to have vastly improved.
“He (Matt Sherratt) has been huge,” admitted Thomas.
“When he came in to Cardiff the second time, he had obviously gone away and worked at different clubs.
“‘When I first met Jockey, he was pretty clear on the fact he likes playing with a ball-playing 12, so the fact he had done that at other clubs was really useful. He was able to really help me develop my game in ways I hadn’t thought of at that time.
“He is a bit of a joker at times. To be fair to him, he gets the balance pretty spot-on of when to switch on to rugby mode and when to have a laugh and a joke.
“He’s been brilliant. He has got a brilliant rugby brain, which is clear for everyone to see by the way he coaches Cardiff.
“The challenge would have been trying to get that across in such a small space of time, but the way he delivers messages is pretty clear, and the boys were able to pick up quite well,” said Thomas.
As stated Thomas was playing back in his beloved 12 shirt where he admitted that he feels more comfortable playing. “It (12) is probably a position I am more comfortable in,” he added.
“Especially given that we played a similar style of game-plan to we play at Cardiff, it was pretty simple for me to fall back into.
“I think he (Sherratt) was pretty clear in terms of the messages he got across and how he wanted us to play. Of course we are going to struggle picking up so much detail in such a short space of time.
“I think the overriding theme was to go out and just show a bit of ambition among the squad. When you are given that licence to play and almost no pressure from him, it freed us up to play nicely.”
Wales will now head to Murrayfield to play Scotland next weekend, but they will head to the Scottish capital with a lot of confidence.
“We were happy after the game with how well we performed, given the circumstances. But having had a chance to look back on it, there is still a lot we can improve on.
“There were probably a lot of chances we left out there. When all the boys get back together next Monday, we will have a few good days working together and we should be able to make a few more fix-ups in time for the Scotland game,” concluded Thomas.
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