The 'few areas' where Gatland felt Wales improved in latest loss

Warren Gatland has refused to blame the off-the-field contractual shenanigans in Wales for Saturday’s latest championship defeat. Not since 2007 have the Welsh lost their opening three matches in the Six Nations but they will now head to Italy on March 11 for what is effectively a wooden spoon decider between the only two teams yet to win a match in 2023.

Avoiding that dubious title is now foremost on Welsh minds even though their round three 10-20 loss to England was classified as not all bad in the eyes of the coach who re-took the head position after Wayne Pivac was sacked in December.

When Gatland previously took over, his arrival was instantly transformative as Wales finished up as 2008 Grand Slam champions. However, that giddy achievement has not been repeated and his deliberations were generally sombre following his third February loss.

Wales were undoubtedly competitive and much improved from their capitulation last time out in Scotland. Here, they kept England waiting until the 75th minute before the result was conclusive, but the sobering outcome was that another L was posted against their name in a campaign where they have yet to really fire.

“We are critical of ourselves in terms of we created a lot of problems for ourselves by not being accurate in key moments and that is what Test match rugby is about,” began Gatland, trying to make sense of it all with Wales now zero from three.

“If you are in that arm wrestle you have got to stay in that fight and it’s about being accurate. We have spoken about us being hard on ourselves in areas we need to improve on. There were improvements in that performance but there is still a lot of work to do. I thought Joe Hawkins did well and Mason (Grady) in his first cap. We defended well at times. We probably need to create a little bit more width on attack. That is something we will continue to work on, and transition in going from defence or from a kick into attack needs a little bit of work.

“Those are areas we can concentrate on improving going forward. Like I said, there were a number of things we were happy with and had improved, and coming to half time we were thinking we were in this game, let’s stay in the arm wrestle. We’re not quite there yet but we are going in the right direction.”

Regarding the threatened Wales player strike that only abated on Wednesday evening following crisis talks with the WRU, Gatland added: “We weren’t making any excuses for what happened during the week. Getting up for an England-Wales game is not difficult. The week was challenging. We realise and understand that but we weren’t making any excuses.”

As for the prospect of round four’s last-place clash away to the Italians, the coach ruminated: “The last thing you want to do is get a wooden spoon. That has got to be our focus. Part of this Six Nations is about us thinking about the next six or seven months as well.

“We have got some older, more experienced players who are still holding their hand up and we have some talented youngsters who need some time. We just probably haven’t got that group in the middle, players who have 30, 40 caps. We will try and marry the two.

“You can’t coach experience and that was part of the conversation I had with Joe Hawkins during the week. He wasn’t happy with his game against Scotland, made a couple of errors. But I thought he had a good game and improved today from us giving him the confidence to go out and play. He is a player who will continue to get better and better, he just needs more time in the middle.”

Skipper Ken Owens’ view on the upcoming Roman trip was: “Every game in a Welsh shirt is a must-win. I’m not hiding away from that fact. We haven’t won a game yet so we will be putting pressure on ourselves to win.”

Yet it wasn’t all doom and gloom for him after losing to England. “I’m proud of the boys, we fronted up,” he insisted. “There was a lot of good stuff out there, the energy, the work rate, I can’t question that. A little bit of accuracy in certain areas but we have trained well in the last two weeks.

“With everything that has gone on off the field, we worked hard and put a shift in. We drew a line in the sand on Wednesday and we are not having that as an excuse. We are disappointed we lost a Test match because we had opportunities to put some more points on the board and we didn’t do that, but I thought it was a definite step up in what we are trying to achieve as a group.”