Cardiff

Arguably it was Wales’ worst performance of the opening three rounds but they still had enough to avoid only a second home Six Nations defeat to the Scots.

The visitors, who started with an impressive win in Italy and then pushed England hard, will lament missed opportunities when they had the wind at their backs.

With both head coaches of the senior teams, Steve Tandy and Gregor Townsend, in attendance it was the hosts that started sharply.

They were 11-0 up after 12 minutes thanks to Exeter lock Evans going over from close range and a pair of booming penalties by Leggatt-Jones.

The second try came in the 16th minute after fast hands released Tom Bowen down the left and the wing stayed calm to put centre, and Cardiff clubmate, Cutts over for a try on debut.

Scotland needed a response but were denied one when a try from a snipe by scrum-half Hamish MacArthur, one of nine Edinburgh players in the XV, was chalked off due to a neck roll in the build-up.

The final act of a scrappy first half was a third Leggatt-Jones penalty to stretch the lead to 19-0.

The Scots were held up over the line three minutes after the restart but were over through Glasgow centre Waugh from a neat offload by rangy fly-half Jack Dalziel.

Scrum-half MacArthur converted to make it 19-7 but Wales caught the visitors cold with a rare attacking foray in the 52nd minute.

Impressive captain Deian Gwynn burst into the 22 from a cunning line-out move for Leggatt-Jones to find the unmarked Scott with a cross-kick that the debutant did well to gather in the challenging wind.

The nerves were settled and Wales sealed victory on the hour when hooker Howe, their star of the tournament so far, barged over.

Scotland finished hunting a pair of bonus points thanks to tries by Marshall and Rennie but late chances went begging and it was a pointless trip.

After a rest weekend, Wales take on Ireland in Cork while Scotland welcome France to Edinburgh.

The Fiji fixture is not Wales’ game to organise.

Wales traditionally play their home matches at the Principality Stadium but this contest is considered an away match with Fiji being the hosts.

Similarly, the invitational Barbarians will be the “home” side when they face Wales at the Allianz Stadium in Twickenham on Saturday, 27 June.

Fiji are set to play their Nations Championship home matches at venues outside their own country, given the logistical difficulties of travel to the Pacific Islands and the ability to maximise revenue at larger grounds elsewhere.

Fiji face England in the second round of fixtures, before finishing the July group stages against Scotland.

The Principality Stadium is also continuing the tradition of hosting a number of non-rugby events this summer, so is unavailable to stage matches in late June and early July.

There are no official events yet listed in the Principality Stadium calendar for July, but rock group Metallica are holding a concert in Cardiff on Sunday, 28 June, 12 days after Take That have played in the Welsh capital.

Wales will host Japan, New Zealand and Australia at the Principality Stadium in November in the second half of the Nations Championship.

As much as the mood has undoubtedly improved this season, the root causes of Cardiff’s recent troubles have not simply disappeared.

Tan remains a divisive figure, as do chairman Mehmet Dalman and chief executive Ken Choo.

They were the target of numerous protests last season, some of which saw hordes of supporters marching to Cardiff City Stadium, holding banners and singing songs demanding that Tan and his fellow board members leave.

Some of the ill feeling can be traced back to Tan’s highly controversial rebranding of the club’s colours from red to blue in 2012, even though he reversed the decision three years later.

More recently, the anger relates to his perceived lack of interest, with Tan having not attended a home game for more than two years.

Then, perhaps most damningly, there is the way he, Dalman and Choo have run the club.

Fans, former players and pundits have all highlighted the startling lack of football knowledge at board level, with no layer of expertise between Tan and the many managers he has hired and fired.

Cardiff at least tried a new method in their appointment of Barry-Murphy, forming a one-off sub-committee which included the club’s academy manager Gavin Chesterfield, former Swansea City sporting director Mark Allen and members of the Wasserman agency. However, the final decision still belonged to Tan.

“They didn’t plan to get relegated,” says Perry. “And in hiring Barry-Murphy, is it really a thorough process that we’ve got to the outcome of getting him? I don’t think so.

“It’s a filtering system, a few people narrowing it down to five choices, and those five choices go then to the owner.

“The problem will always be the owner, simply because he hasn’t got that knowledge to pick out of those five. Nathan Jones was in there [on the shortlist], there were others who weren’t similar to Barry-Murphy.

“I’ll only start calling it a process if Barry-Murphy goes and the next appointment is very similar. Then it becomes a process, get another coach who puts a team out that we can identify with as supporters and is also successful.

“But you must have knowledge of what you’re looking for. The same problems are here at this club, and they need to change for us to have success continuously.”

Given how well the Barry-Murphy appointment has gone so far, then, might Tan be convinced to use a director of football or similar on a permanent basis?

“The total opposite,” Perry says. “I think he’ll get carried away, so much so that it will reinforce his own opinion of himself, that he is the right man because of what we’re seeing now.

“He will not look at the process and put his hands up and go, ‘possibly we’re fortunate here because it wasn’t our first choice’.

“You have to be honest, reflection is a key part of football or any big business, but when you reflect you have to be honest and you have to look at your skillset. Then you have to either improve that skillset or you bring somebody in that has those skills. Unfortunately, at City we don’t have that and that is my concern.”

There is no guarantee of an instant return to the Championship. It took Cardiff 18 years to get back to that level when they were last relegated to the third tier in 1985.

Of the 30 teams to have been in the Premier League and relegated to League One, six have never made it back to the Championship.

Given how Cardiff are going this season, they should not add to that number.

Promotion will not fix everything, though.

“I came into this season determined to enjoy it,” says Perry.

“We’re doing well, playing a brand that we identify with and everybody’s happy.

“But you’ve only got to look around the football club and I still see the same mistakes.”