Warren Gatland felt his facet collapsed within the second half on their solution to recording a heavy defeat to France.
Talking instantly after the sport, a solemn Gatland mentioned his facet “sadly capitulated a bit within the final quarter-hour.”
With the clock having ticked previous the hour mark and his facet having defiantly deterred a mess of French close-range assaults, their resistance lastly broke when debutant Georges-Henri Colombe burrowed underneath Welsh objective line defence.
Simply three minutes after, one other of France’s hefty replacements, Romain Taofifenua charged down Gareth Davies to crash over, earlier than a Thomas Ramos penalty and Maxime Lucu strive helped France on their solution to a bonus level win and file factors complete towards Wales within the Six Nations.
Wales’ head coach rued his sides poor sport administration within the sport’s decisive minutes, saying: “We most likely overplayed slightly bit.
“65 minutes on the clock and we’re successful the sport. A major turnover after which we’ve allowed. Them to get in behind us and rating.
“Nonetheless at six factors down, it was a type of video games the place you’re saying ‘keep within the battle, don’t give something comfortable even when it means enjoying slightly little bit of territory’ to place some strain on them and never give away something”.
As a substitute, Wales’ most skilled participant, Davies on his 76th cap, was charged down with no cowl from the on-rushing Taofifenua.
“We’ve given them one thing comfortable, and the sport’s gone away from us,” he added. “We have to study, study fairly rapidly, about dealing with these minutes.
“In worldwide rugby you don’t usually get the posh of getting away with these, you get punished for these issues. We’re feeling the consequences of that in the mean time”.
Except for Davies, Wales conceded the 2 essential tries with a backline averaging 21 caps, a scenario that was of Gatland’s personal creation given his shock resolution to drop 155 caps within the type of the well-established centre partnership of Nick Tompkins and George North.
“So much was made concerning the centres”, mentioned Gatland. “I believed as a mix they did okay immediately. They’ll study from that, they may study defensively when it comes to the linespeed.
“Our linespeed was off slightly bit, France get spherical us and brought on us issues. “We run the identical play towards them the place their 12 and 13 get excessive and defend and shut us down. [Owen Watkin and Joe Roberts] will get higher from that, they’ll study from that.”
Nonetheless, Gatland defended his choice. Certainly, till the final quarter-hour, it appeared Watkin and Roberts had been justifying their choice themselves.
Watkin created Wales’ second strive for Tomos Williams brilliantly, while Joe Roberts offered a muscular end to provide Wales their final lead within the sport.
“We made a number of adjustments with out making a multitude. If we’d saved the identical midfield as we had final week when it comes to Nick Tompkins and George, then we would’ve began Mason Grady. We’re simply attempting to combine folks with out being too radical with the quantity of adjustments and giving these guys that have at this stage”.
Written by Tom Jeffreys
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