Owen Lane is fit, firing and available for Saturday’s Guinness PRO14 clash with Edinburgh at Cardiff Arms Park (5.15pm).
The Cardiff Blues star narrowly missed out on a place at Rugby World Cup after making a try-scoring debut against Ireland in the summer.
Lane, who has scorched over 17 tries in 39 appearances for Wales’ Capital Region, missed last weekend’s bonus-point victory over Isuzu Southern Kings but he has been given the all-clear for Saturday’s 2019-20 homecoming.
Assistant coach Richard Hodges said: “Laney is back in the mix this week. He has trained really well, we just have to make sure there is no reaction over the next 48 hours, and he will be good to go.
“Our back-three has some severe depth at the moment and that’s only going to be added to when we get Hallam and Josh in the mix, hopefully in a couple of months.”
Ponting to the form of Matthew Morgan, who picked up the Guinness man-of-the-match award last week, Hodges continued: “The biggest thing you see with Nipper at the moment are his performances reflect his training week and all the unseen work he puts in.
“The aerial work he puts in, the detail he puts in, keeping his elbows square in the air, knee lift etcetera. He puts a huge amount of time and effort in and he’s getting the just rewards for that.”
The Blues bagged five tries during their victory in Port Elizabeth, but it was far from plain sailing.
Hodges is acutely aware of the areas that need fine-tuning but he is pleased with the progress being made and has called on his side to take advantage of the World Cup period.
He continued: “We were delighted to get five points away on the road against the Kings but when we came back in and did our reviews, we understood it was quite a lucky win in the end. We got ourselves to 31-20 and were settled but there were a few errors, which consistently let us down and gave the Kings a bit of a foot hold into the game.
“Elements of our game got going, like our driving maul which struggled at times last year and is something we have focussed on in pre-season and in that game. We only won one game on the road, outside of Wales last year so we have already matched that and it’s onto Edinburgh.
“We have to strike while the iron is hot with the World Cup going on, and we fell the calibre of team we can get on the field is strong, we have worked through an extended pre-season on certain areas of our game, particularly around both 22s and that was an area of our game that was neat and tidy.
“We are happy. We’ve had three hit outs, there are always areas that are rusty and we’re aware of that and working hard to right some wrongs there. It’s so far, so good but this will be out biggest challenge.”
Edinburgh kicked off their own season with a convincing win over Zebre at BT Murrayfield and travel to Cardiff in high spirits.
Despite missing a number of key players to Scotland duty, they boast impressive strength in depth and Hodges is under no illusions that they will present a formidable challenge.
“We’ve watched their London Scottish and Ospreys pre-season games and obviously Zebre over the weekend, which was fairly straightforward for them.
“They are hit by a lot of international call-ups and the rule of thumb tends to be Scotland are the Edinburgh forwards and Glasgow backs.
“Their back-line is particularly strong with the likes of Bennett and Van der Merwe, Van der Walt, Matt Scott, who have a big impact and there are a lot of names like Murray Douglas, Carmichael, Crosbie, Nick Hainey, and these boys are really put their hand up for them
“It will be a tight, close game and any side coached by Richard Cockerill will be, but it is our home patch, it is our pitch and we are pretty happy with the strength and depth we have, so we have to back ourselves to make it two out of two.”
Tickets for Cardiff Blues versus Edinburgh are available now and can be purchased by calling 029 20 302030 or clicking here.