The Wales captain, Dewi Lake, has apologised to Welsh supporters for “letting them down” after his team’s comprehensive 48-7 defeat by England. The visitors were second best in all departments and have now lost 22 of their last 24 Test matches with a buoyant France heading for Cardiff next Sunday in ominous form.
Lake did not mince his words after his team’s latest heavy loss which saw them concede seven tries and receive four yellow cards. “We let ourselves down, we let people down,” he said. “We spoke all week about what we were going to produce and we didn’t do it. There is no other way to say it – we’re massively disappointed with what we put on the field today.
“Every voice matters to us at the minute, every fan in a seat that can get behind us. We said we would get the fans on their feet and we didn’t today. We put ourselves under pressure, the penalty count and the yellow cards are down to us. We will be better next week. This group will fight for each other all day, there is never a question of effort. [But] we weren’t accurate enough when we had opportunities. You can’t do that against one of the form teams in world rugby.”
The Wales head coach, Steve Tandy, was similarly dismayed. “We are bitterly disappointed. We were inaccurate and couldn’t get any momentum. Playing England with 15 men is tough enough. Playing with 13 men for almost 20 minutes is hard. We are not a good enough team to have these inaccuracies. Even though we are 11th in the world and we came up against the third team in the world we expect more of ourselves.”
England’s Steve Borthwick, in contrast, was happy enough with many aspects of his side’s performance as they extended their winning run to 12 in a row. “I thought defensively we were excellent, I thought our kicking game was excellent,” he said. “What was pleasing is that we created lots of opportunities. But in the second half we didn’t convert those opportunities in the way we’d have liked.”
Borthwick also paid tribute to Henry Arundell, whose hat-trick of first-half tries extended his tally for England to 11 in 12 Tests. “We all know Henry is a player who has an incredible ability running with the ball and his ability to find a way to the try line is excellent,” the head coach said. “What I have been really impressed is over the last number of months is his attitude to go and improve other aspects of his game. He has worked exceptionally hard and has come back to the Six Nations an even better player.”
Jamie George, who led out the team with regular captain Maro Itoje starting on the bench, also suggested England were now in a handy position heading into next Saturday’s Calcutta Cup game at Murrayfield. “Regardless of who we were playing next week it’s a brilliant platform. We wanted to start with a bang and I thought we did that today.”
George Ford, the man of the match, also believes there is more to come from England and praised the first half efforts of his pack. “The start of a Test match is always massive. I thought the boys did that well … we were able to dominate territory because of the boys up front. We are just trying to put bits of our game together, the more attacking opportunities we create the more we should take.”
