Meet Wales’ New Cap Craig Morgan

Craig Morgan will become Wales’ 998th cap when he makes his full international debut against Ireland at Lansdowne Road on Sunday, 3 February.
The 23-year-old Pontypridd Youth product first pulled on the red shirt for Wales Youth, but injury robbed him of a place in the Wales Under 19 side that reached the final of the IRB/FIRA Junior World Cup on home soil in 1997.
In 1998 Craig appeared briefly for Wales A as a replacement wing and was at full back for Wales Under 21, including their defeat of the Irish Under 21 side at Caerphilly.
He figured in the Wales A teams that took on the South African and New Zealand A sides at the Millennium Stadium in November, 2000, five months after helping Wales qualify for the Rugby World Cup Sevens finals by winning their European qualifying event in Heidelberg, Germany.
Quick and strong, with an enormous left boot, Morgan is equally at home at full back and on the wing. He will win his first cap eight months on from the Wales tour to Japan when he had been earmarked for one of the wing berths in the two Tests.
An injury in the opening match against the Japanese champions Suntory wrecked his tour and another injury during pre-season training at Cardiff put much of this season on hold.
One of his first competitive games for Cardiff was the Heineken Cup quarter-final against Bath in 1998, when he had a near length of the field try disallowed, and in his first two seasons with the Arms Park club he scored 26 tries in only 40 full games.
He fared even better in the 1999/2000 season when he managed to score a try in every game he played. He ended the season as the club’s leading try scorer with 14 in 10 outings.
Not that everything has come up smelling of roses for the 5ft 11in tall, 14st flyer. He was put out on loan to First Division Abercynon for a while to help build up his playing experience in his early days at Cardiff.
That exercise did him a power of good and he made a spectacular start to the 2000/2001 campaign with tries in the first six matches, including a hat trick against Edinburgh Reivers, and a magnificent length of the field effort at his old club Pontypridd that was one of the tries of the season.
He kept on scoring and he managed to bag a try in 17 successive games for Cardiff between April 1999 and September 2000.
His try scoring touch seems to have eluded him so far this season as he has gone an amazing eight matches without a try.