‘Not only that but he was up there with the most number of tackles. Tight-head is one of the hardest positions to play because every game you are under pressure and technically if you don’t get it right you get dorked.
‘Gethin will obviously have times as a tight-head when that happens to him and he will learn from it. The unfortunate thing is that he is having to learn it at the highest level.’
‘Given time and the right environment to work and develop in, players like Gethin, Robert Sidoli and Jonathan Thomas are going to be very, very good players,’ he said.
‘There’s no doubting their natural ability, it’s just about harnessing that. Sidoli is maturing fast and I have learned a lot about Jonathan Thomas both in training and against Australia and I thought he played very well in his test debut.’
As for Jenkins, he was as down to earth as ever after giving Australia’s older and more experienced scrummager Bill Young a tough test in what was only his third game as a tight head prop and his first outing after almost two months on the sidelines with an ankle injury.
‘I felt fine afterwards, in fact I was surprised how good I felt towards the end of the game. I know it was against the Wallabies but I have played in a lot harder games than that,’ said the 22-year-old Jenkins.
‘I don’t really care where they want to play me I just want to be in the Wales team. That’s the only important thing to me.’
Jenkins may have represented Wales at every level since schoolboy as a loose head prop, including his full Test debut against Romania last year, but Hansen believes his future lies in the No 3 jersey.
