TODAY is not just crunch time for Wales, but it's the day of reckoning for coach Steve Hansen, and Italy hold the key.

Victory over the Azzurri and Wales are guaranteed a place in the quarter-finals of the World Cup, honour will be restored and Hansen will be safe until his contract expires at the end of this season's Six Nations Champion-ship.

Defeat by a country where rugby is not the national sport by a long way, and Hansen will have to do the honour-able thing and resign, though the exit could be delayed until after Wales, final World Cup group game against New Zealand in Sydney a week tomorrow.

Hansen has said all along to his critics - and there have been many after Wales, run of eleven successive defeats halted only in August - "Judge me on the World Cup."

Maybe it is the reason Hansen has been so uptight this week, especially compared with totally relaxed Italian coach John Kirwan, who could be excused for thinking he had the world's problems on his shoulders.

He has had a stack of injury worries and also major concern at the proximity of the Canada and Wales games, meaning the team hasn't been able to train fully whereas injury-free Wales have had two days longer to prepare.

Recent Welsh rugby history is littered with casualties in and around World Cup time.

Alan Davies arrived just before the 1991 tournament only to famously say "My shoulders alone aren't broad enough to carry the hopes of a nation" after the shock defeat by Western Samoa.

And he was fired from the job on the eve of the following World Cup after a string of poor results when in came Australian Alex Evans, though he didn't last long.