5. Wales need to ‘nail the big moments’ if they want to get better as a team for Australia
The defeat to South Africa marks a seventh consecutive defeat for Warren Gatland and his Wales squad, with the head coach recognising where his side let themselves down. Understandably, the cards were stacked against them given the nature of their back-to-back World Cup winning opponents, but Gatland was frustrated in how his side failed to ‘nail those big moments’.
Gatland expressed how his side ‘switched off a little bit’ in the match’s latter stages, despite running out a solid account of themselves to keep in touch with the Springboks. Unfortunately, this is another match that Gatland will have to write off to experience, as his side looks to end their losing streak against Joe Schmidt’s Wallabies.
WARREN GATLAND: “We’ve identified certain areas where we can get a bit better, some of them came off the bench in terms of them being accurate. Because you just talked about nailing those big moments. And when you nail those big moments, then you get some reward out of it. We probably were a little bit guilty.
“There were a few opportunities for us and on attack. We didn’t… we weren’t quite accurate enough, and even things that people got caught out and just probably switched off a little bit. We haven’t reacted and allowed them to sort of make a couple of breaks. So those are the sorts of things that we’re working hard on trying to address and making sure that we are (better).