Warburton draws positives from second-half fightback

Wales captain Sam Warburton will head to Paris next weekend believing his side’s strong second-half fightback against Ireland can be the catalyst to ending a miserable eight-Test losing streak.

Ireland’s victory ended Welsh hopes of repeating last season’s RBS 6 Nations Grand Slam and, following a terrible autumn series, consigned the home side to a fifth straight home defeat.

Yet having trailed 30-3 after 42 minutes, Warburton saw his players stage a strong rally, cancel out a three-try deficit by pinning the Irish in their own half for much of the rest of the game, the relentless pressure producing yellow cards for Rory Best and Conor Murray.

Ultimately there was further disappointment for Wales but as Warburton turned his focus towards next Saturday’s game with France, the back-row insisted the absence of a victory since last year’s Six Nations had not become a psychological millstone.

“It’s not talked about really,” Warburton said. “The players are desperate to play well every week and I felt before the game that everyone seemed very confident and upbeat.

“We’ll pick ourselves back up, look at what happened in that first 25 minutes and get back in on Monday and look forward to trying to get a great win in France. That’s what we’re going to have to do and it is tough to lose eight games on the bounce but in that second half there were times when we did exceptionally well and could have scored a lot more points.

“There was definitely some good stuff in there and we’ll take confidence from that and make sure that a massive emphasis next week will be on starting well.”

Wales head coach Rob Howley echoed his captain’s words, in ruing a terrible opening 25 minutes.

“It’s frustrating and disappointing really, the way we started, allowing Ireland the foothold,” Howley said.

“The key in any international game is territory and possession and we came second best by a long way, probably, between eight and 30 minutes. Ireland’s kicking game early on compounded our lack of accuracy in the contact area, with a couple of turnovers, allowed Ireland field position and that pressure built and built and built.”

Even during the second-half, Howley was left to wonder what might have been&.

“To come back from 30-3 to where we were, it’s a bit of a silly question to ask about players not buying in.

“Everyone talks about creating opportunities in international rugby and that’s possibly the hardest thing to do. The most simplistic thing to do is to actually finish and in those situations we didn’t finish and we’ve probably left 21, 28 points out there. So there’s a lot of positives in there but the key was that first 20-25 minutes. You need a foothold, whoever you’re playing and we didn’t give ourselves a chance because we didn’t achieve that.”