High-flyer Easterby in line to replace Gatland at Wales

Come tomorrow afternoon, Wales fans will be focused on whether new interim coach Matt Sherratt can provide them with the spark that has been so sorely lacking during Warren Gatland's second tenure and potentially salvage something from the wreckage of another Six Nations.

- LUKE BAKER

Whatever moment they thought represented rock bottom – the first-ever home defeat to Fiji in November perhaps or the 52-20 humiliation against an unproven Australia side seven days later – there is definitely a new feel to things heading into this weekend.

Not exactly optimism, given that the visitors are a well-drilled Ireland side who are on track to become the first team in Five or Six Nations history to win three back-to-back outright titles, but at least hope that something, anything, may be different in Cardiff. And, at this point, different can hardly be worse. Can it?

Sherratt, who is well-liked in rugby circles and whose abilities as an attacking coach are highly regarded, has wasted little time in shaking things up while on secondment from his usual role as head coach of Cardiff Rugby. Fly halves Gareth Anscombe and Jarrod Evans, as well as prolific try-scoring Gloucester centre Max Llewellyn, were all immediately brought into training camp having been inexplicably left out by Gatland. Anscombe and Llewellyn have been thrust straight into the starting XV as part of eight changes from the team that started the Italy clash, while Evans is on the bench.

Gatland acolyte Rob Howley has also been quietly shuffled out as attack coach and while it is probably all unlikely to be enough to bring down Ireland, although the players themselves will rightly believe they can spring an almighty upset, it is at least fresh. It may well also set them up to have a proper crack at the more vulnerable Scotland and England in the final two rounds.