WARREN Gatland insists there will be no “festival rugby” from Wales when they tackle Scotland in an autumn international for the first time tomorrow.

The two nations meet at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium (kick-off 2.45pm) to contest the Doddie Weir Cup in honour of the former Scotland second row who is suffering from motor neurone disease.

Head coach Gatland, back to lead Wales following the death of his father, yesterday named uncapped Ospreys wing and former Newport RFC speedster Luke Morgan in his starting XV, with five Dragons players also in the matchday squad.

Gareth Anscombe of Cardiff Blues gets the fly-half jersey and former Dragons star Dan Lydiate returns to the international fold after almost a year.

And while it may be unusual to see the Celtic rivals playing each other outside the Six Nations, Gatland insists the position of the game in the calendar won’t mean anything but a hard-fought Test.

“It’s going to be a tough and physical encounter,” he said.

“Hearing the stuff that’s coming out of their camp, they’re talking about how they got the preparation wrong last season (Wales won 34-7 in the Six Nations match in Cardiff).

“It wasn’t about a good Wales performance, it was about how poorly they had prepared, so that kind of puts things into perspective for us.

“We’re just making sure we’re mentally on our game and we have to bring the right sort of physicality for a Test match against a tier one nation.

“It will be a proper Test match, I can guarantee you that. We’re not going out there to play festival rugby, we want to play attractive rugby but smart and winning rugby.

“We’ve got to make sure that we’re smart in terms of the way we approach the game.

“Tactically, in the Six Nations, we were excellent, we did a great job in nullifying Stuart Hogg’s attacking threat.”

He added: “We’re expecting a good crowd on the weekend and we’re looking forward to what’s going to be a very competitive game.

“I can tell you that we’re definitely motivated to want to do well.

“If you think back to that (the game earlier this year), we were up by 14 points fairly early on which probably changed their mindset and they threw the ball around a little bit more.

“They didn’t stay in the arm wrestle as long as they would have liked, and probably didn’t kick as much tactically as they normally would.

“I would presume the message from Gregor (Townsend, Scotland head coach) is to stay in the arm wrestle for as long as they can to pressurise us and look to take their opportunities that way.

“That’s why I’m expect this game to be really physical and I think their players who were involved last season will be disappointed with the result and performance, and they’ll be wanting to rectify that.

“We’re well aware of that and the players have prepared exceptionally well in the last couple of weeks to get themselves ready for Saturday.”

Gatland’s swansong with Wales will be at next autumn’s World Cup in Japan, and he is more than happy with how things are going in the camp at present.

He said: “We’re pretty excited about where we are and the squad that we’re starting to develop with a bit of depth and competition.

“For a lot of players, they’re realising this is their last opportunity for getting ready for a World Cup.

“There’s a real buzz of excitement in this camp.”

Wales team to play Scotland: L Halfpenny (Scarlets); G North (Ospreys), J Davies (Scarlets), H Parkes (Scarlets), L Morgan (Ospreys); G Anscombe (Cardiff Blues), G Davies (Scarlets); N Smith (Ospreys), K Owens (Scarlets), D Lewis (Cardiff Blues), C Hill (Dragons), A W Jones (Ospreys, capt), D Lydiate (Ospreys), J Tipuric (Ospreys), R Moriarty (Dragons).

Reps: E Dee (Dragons), R Evans (Scarlets), L Brown (Dragons), A Beard (Ospreys), A Wainwright (Dragons), T Williams (Cardiff Blues), J Evans (Cardiff Blues), S Evans (Scarlets).