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Steve Tandy has admitted there is no hiding from his team’s below-par performance in their 28-21 home Nations Championship victory over Japan on Saturday where they looked flat at times and kept their opponents in the contest.
Wales ran in four tries to collect a bonus point and although it was a third win in five games, the head coach felt his side needed to be more ruthless.
“It’s a bonus-point win. It’s good to start,” Tandy said. “I can’t run away from the performance. There are elements we need to improve. I thought we’d be better. We weren’t ruthless enough.”
Tandy suggested rust may have been to blame as Wales played their first test since July.
“Getting a hit out for the first time since the summer, it does get clunky,” he said. “It helps to review after a bonus point win. We’ll enjoy it but the beauty of this group is the hunger to get better quicker. We’ll definitely have to do that.”
Next up for Wales are New Zealand next weekend and Australia. Tandy knows his side cannot afford to offer up cheap opportunities in those games.
“We’d go seven points up and there’d be a sloppy moment,” he said. “There was some excitement in what we tried to do. Japan were effective close to the line. We managed the game well outside of that. Defensively, we improved.”
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South Africa thump Italy to stay perfect in Nations Championship
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Springboks smash Italy
South Africa strolled past an injury-hit Italy with a 66-7 win in Saturday’s Nations Championship meeting in Turin, where the fly-half Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu scored the first of nine Springbok tries and added another 21 points from a perfect kicking display.
South Africa ran in six tries in an utterly dominant opening half. Hooker Malcolm Marx went over twice, adding to scores by Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Morne van den Berg and the captain Siya Kolisi and Damian Willemse, with Feinberg-Mngomezulu kicking all six conversions having opened the scoring with a penalty.
Wilco Louw added another try after the break before Italy finally got off the mark with Federico Ruzza’s try converted by Tommaso Allan. Springbok wing Ethan Hooker ran in the final score on the stroke of full-time.
South Africa had claimed maximum points from their three July fixtures to top the Southern Hemisphere group ahead of New Zealand on points difference and they added to that total against Italy ahead of the All Blacks facing Scotland. Reuters
Japan coach Eddie Jones felt it was a missed opportunity for his side, who had 62% of the possession but struggled with entries into the Wales 22.
“That could have been a historic win for us,” Jones said. “But you’ve got to be good enough to take advantage of those mistakes. We weren’t quite good enough. It was a missed opportunity.
“I’m proud of my team. We had a young team, but they stuck at it. We had a few times where we didn’t take chances and Wales did.”
Japan face England on 14 November.
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