dtaai-maai wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2024 5:15 pm
pharvey wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2024 5:29 am
Going to have to drown my sorrows and have a good night's kip before commenting on Wales vs France!!
And before you do, I have to say for the record (after my jocular exaggerations on the football thread
) that Wales played pretty well for much of the game until they unsurprisingly ran out of steam in the last 15 minutes or so.
France were hardly the side from earlier in the tournament. Certainly not at their best, but far better than they have been - wholesale changes (8 I believe) and with the likes of Penaud turning up for once this tournament (and turn up he did
), Wales were doing well to still be in touch with 15 minutes to go! Costello had not done anything particularly well at Fly-half for Wales, but Ioan Lloyd seemed absolutely clueless when he replaced him around the 60 min mark - it was not much different at Scrumhalf with Hardy replacing Williams also at +/- 60 mins. On the whole, the bench just did not work for Wales.... So much for the "we'll tire the huge French forwards out" - a tad difficult when France had 2 sets of them!!
France played the power game which Wales simply struggled to deal with - but we shot ourselves in the foot at times which certainly didn't help matters!!
Certainly can't complain about the result, but will be bitching about certain aspects on the Welsh side for a little while yet...
Yes it's a young (and fairly inexperienced) side, yes we're rebuilding.... But come the feck on, we need far more positives than we're getting at the moment. Italy is a huge game for Wales next week make no mistake. There's a few players there, old heads and new that should be a tad concerned over their places (Josh Adams being one of them).
Despite the result, it's good to see France at least enjoying their rugby - and when they do, they will try all sorts.....