Six Nations: Henry hoping lessons have been learnt

Wales are determined to erase their painful Murrayfield memories by shutting the door on France if they establish a commanding lead in Paris this weekend.

Scotland trailed 25-6 and 28-16 in Edinburgh a month ago, but still fought back and grabbed an unlikely Six Nations draw.

It left Wales coach Graham Henry wondering what might have been, and his players have received several subsequent reminders about that second-half collapse.

"We talked about the Scotland game on the Monday immediately after it - a post mortem session when we analysed our strengths and weaknesses from that match," Henry said.

"Clearly, our ability to successfully play out the last 25 minutes was a problem.

"We don't get into big leads too often, and it is all a matter of confidence about winning big games and putting teams away properly.

"We shouldn't have thrown away the lead we had in Scotland, and we knew that a similar thing could have happened in France two years ago."

Wales held on for a momentous 34-33 victory that day, their first Paris success since 1975, while they haven't enjoyed back-to-back triumphs in the French capital for more than 40 years.

French coach Bernard Laporte has axed fly-half Christophe Lamaison in favour of Montferrand's Gerald Merceron following his poor goal-kicking display against Italy earlier this month, but Henry doesn't expect that decision to work especially in Wales' favour.

"Obviously the French selectors don't feel that Lamaison is playing well enough, and he didn't have his best game in Italy," Henry added.

"I would imagine that Merceron is as strong a kicker out of hand as Lamaison."

As for the game itself, Henry is relieved to see it going ahead, and feels that last month's Ireland postponement - called off because of the foot-and-mouth crisis, might even have helped preparations.

"The players have been pretty sharp in training, and I think that the Irish postponement may have been of some help because it allowed them a break," he said.

"We are all looking forward to Saturday - we've always been very confident that the game would go ahead.

"The build-up to the Ireland Test was difficult in that we always thought there was a pretty strong possibility that the game wasn't going to be played."