Jonathan Davies criticized Wales’ “ridiculous” and “desperate” attacking display after Warren Gatland’s side defeated Scotland at Murrayfield.
After a humiliating first round defeat at home to Ireland, Warren Gatland’s visitors looked to bounce back and claim their first Six Nations victory in Edinburgh, but fell apart as Scotland scored five tries and talisman Finn Russell ran the show.
Wales squandered in attack seeing several golden opportunities to get back into the game as Scotland dominated set-pieces and discipline problems reappeared, with Liam Williams being sent to the basket for the second consecutive week.
While Scotland deserved the plaudits they rightly received after the win, the other major talking point after the match was Wales’ lack of attacking power up front, and Jiffy couldn’t hold back when he and his fellow Scotland specialists BBC Martin Johnson and John Barclay broke into the away attack.
Whilst praising the efforts of the Wales forwards, particularly the young trio of Jack Morgan, Tommy Raffel and Christ Tshiunza, Jiffy was less praising of the defenders, stating that Wales’ attacking play was “one-dimensional” and “desperate to see .” However, while he said the lack of accuracy on offense was a “big problem”, he admitted that he was unsure of how to fix it.
“Young people stood up today and they will be the future of Welsh forwards,” Gabby Logan told the presenter. “My problem is the lack of creativity. This has been our issue for several years now and today they were one dimensional, they were inaccurate, a little ignorant to be honest.
“It’s been a few years since we’ve seen Wales play creative, open and attacking rugby. We were always persistent, we always held back, the forwards were always good to us, but once we were behind we were never able to chase the game again. Today we fought in the first half, maybe we should have had the advantage, but once again we lacked precision.
“It’s going to be a big challenge, but who are we going to take? We don’t have the depth of Scotland and Ireland. So what happens is the regions don’t win, we don’t develop players. , but you look at the Scottish regions, Edinburgh and Glasgow are doing well. So that’s a problem.”
With the defeat to Scotland the latest in a string of embarrassing results for Wales, Jiffy wondered whether Wales really have a plan for what to do when they are 22, having squandered a number of chances while they were in the cast. half.
“They lost to Italy, they lost to Georgia, they scored 21 points against Australia and they lost that and then we had the last two Six Nations games. I think Warren Gatland said they had six minutes to their opponents’ 22.
“What do they actually do in training to overcome [the line]? If they’re going to stay at 22 for that long they need to have some tactics, the defenders interact with the forwards like Ireland and Scotland do. But even the back is so one-dimensional that sometimes you desperately want to see it.”
“The way we played, I just don’t understand,” he added. “As we can’t have the ball and we don’t convert the pressure into points, we put pressure on ourselves because it’s frustrating and, when the opponent gains momentum and scores, we run after it and sometimes it’s despair.”
Both Barkley and Johnson were in full agreement with the former Wales international, with the Scot criticizing a lack of Welsh creativity in attack, before the World Cup captain said a “fantastic” Welsh group had been “let down because of the what was going on behind them.” “. “.
“Wales scored a try against Ireland in the Principality when the game ended and they scored a try here when Scotland were a man down,” said Barclay. “They could have used that Dyer River attempt, but other than that I think you’re absolutely right, [there was a] lack of creativity, precision, structure, innovation.”
According to Jiffy, Johnson added: “Jonathan is right, those Welsh forwards really came true. They worked hard, stayed, but were not rewarded.
“Jonathan said ‘don’t shoot the ball’ but I said it was the best option because your first half offense is so bad you lose the ball when you win. Scotland have firepower in van der Merwe and guys who, when they have the ball, can beat a player, have structure in attack and know what they are trying to do. Wales have neither at the moment.”
“It’s just a crass attack trying to target itself, you can’t do that,” he added. “They will face a tougher defense than Scotland. They’re just missing something on offense now.”
Source: Wales Online
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