Warren Gatland tried to find a good explanation for why Wales lost 43-0. He picked out the way his team had “overplayed” in a couple of key moments, which he said was all down to their inexperience, and touched on a handful of decisions made by the refereeing team: a high tackle on Josh Adams which had not been punished, penalties against James Botham and Freddie Thomas which he felt had been unduly harsh. But even Gatland didn’t seem persuaded by the case he was making.
The unavoidable, and uncomfortable, truth is that Wales played pretty much as well as they can right now, and still came up short in every respect. “I don’t think it was an entirely bad day at the office,” Gatland said, which is a hell of an observation to make about a record defeat. “The scrum was good, some of the lineout was good, there were some really good defensive sets. It’s about where can we fix up to be smarter, and put the opposition under pressure instead of inviting it on ourselves.”
They have a week to get it right. Next Saturday they play Italy in Rome, in what is going to be one of the defining games of Gatland’s career. “Next week becomes pretty important for us, and we can’t hide from that fact,” Gatland said. “We need to get that monkey off our back.”
The players, he said, were already talking about it. “We’ve just had a couple of cap presentations in the changing room, and they spoke really well about how important next week is for this group.”
They will likely go into it without Aaron Wainwright and Owen Watkin, who both went off injured. Wainwright will need another head injury assessment and has a bad gash on his cheek besides, while Watkin is wearing a leg brace and has a suspected anterior cruciate ligament injury. Two more reasons why Gatland’s mood was so subdued.
“I can’t question the players’ effort,” he said, again and again. It would be easier if he could, at least then he would have an easy solution.
