MICHAEL Owen is hoping he has done enough to convince Gareth Jenkins he deserves more than just cameos from the bench as Wales' World Cup challenge reaches crunch time.

The Newport Gwent Dragons back row forward made his third appearance as a replacement of the tournament in the crushing win over Japan.

And the 26-year-old showed some trademark nice touches in his 22 minutes on the Millennium Stadium turf, making some telling runs and displaying good hands to lay a try for Gareth Cooper on a plate.

After initially missing out on the match day squad, Owen was the beneficiary of Jonathan Thomas' finger injury and now he hopes he has done enough to merit a larger role as Wales head back over to France.

"I'm desperate to get opportunities to show what I can do and prove I deserve to be in the team," he said. "I was happy with how it went and I made good decisions when I was on, so now I want to be starting for the big games.

"They are all huge matches now. It's coming to a crescendo, Fiji is like a knockout game and hopefully we then head into a quarter-final.

"There's a bit of improving to be done but we definitely have the ability to go far in this tournament."

Wales cut Japan to shreds as they crossed for 11 tries but Owen insists they will need to take it up a notch or two if they are to avoid a slip up against Fiji in Nantes.

"It got a bit patchy at the end and it would have been nice to get a bit more ball in hand," said Owen. "It was good in a way that we made line breaks and scored from one-off plays but it would have been nice to go through the phases and score after sustained pressure.

"There were areas that we need to work on but now we need to move onto the Fiji game and get the win there to get the quarter-final with the Springboks."