Gatland: We showed some real character out there

Warren Gatland finally believes he has got something to build on after watching his side plunder four tries against one of the World Cup favourites at the Stade de France.

“We went out today and we were positive,” he said. “We could have taken three points, but we went for the corner and went for the seven points. That’s when we scored the first try with George North, which put France under a little bit of pressure.

“It’s about us being positive and not rushing a few things. I was disappointed with Dan Biggar missing touch with a penalty, and then we had another turnover that cost us a bit.

“But I think we will continue to get better, and I thought the bench had a much bigger impact than they had in previous games. Bradley Roberts missed his first throw but then scored a try; Dafydd Jenkins was great, and Tomos Williams made an impact when he came on.

“I wanted to find out about a number of players, and I wanted to give some of the youngsters an opportunity. We feel they will have learned from those experiences, and they’ll continue to develop. Some of the older players aren’t going to keep going for ever. You saw that we made some changes quite early in the second half to get some fresh legs on, and that was positive.

“There is a lot of work to do, but we’ve made some good improvements. We’re pretty excited and we talked in the changing room after the game about how we’ve improved and showed some real character today.”

Captain Ken Owens said: “It was a frustrating performance at times because of gifting them opportunities.

“We knew we had to score tries and we showed that. I’m confident we will get better the more time we have together with that conditioning work and putting ourselves under pressure in training.

“That will solve those inaccuracies in our game that we’ve seen throughout the tournament.”