By Paul Jones
Ken Owens has told his Wales teammates to get their hard hats on and get ready for plenty more flak after the opening Six Nations hammerings to Ireland and Scotland.
The Wales captain has warned the squad to prepare for “incoming grenades” ahead of the game against England in round three of the Six Nations.
Owens is expecting plenty more criticism in the wake of the worst result against Scotland in the 140-year history of the fixture – a 35-7 defeat.
But that’s not the worst statistic of them all.
In the opening two rounds of the Six Nations, Wales have conceded nine tries, missed 56 tackles, given away 32 penalties and picked up three yellow cards.
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Things have to get better before England arrive at the Principality Stadium on Saturday week.
“We have to stay tight as a squad and we have to be honest with each other, because there are going to be some grenades coming in from the outside,” said Owens.
“We have to front up to that, which is what we do in Wales. We’re pretty comfortable with that.
“It’s about working hard next week with no game next weekend. We’ll have a tough week, put the graft in and stay tight.”
“We had a lot of changes in the pack and I thought the boys there really showed their potential. We had a really good first half performance and we were a bit unlucky not to go in ahead at half-time.
“We delivered everything we spoke about but in the second half we made back-to-back errors and put pressure on ourselves. When you give a team like Scotland a chance they are going to punish you.
“That’s what happened in the second half because we made errors and allowed them to come at us. It’s about confidence – when you are winning and have momentum it’s hard to lose, but now we are on the flip side of that.”
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England picked up their first win of the championship at Twickenham on Sunday, when they beat Italy 31-14. Wales lead 6-5 against them at home in the Six Nations.
“It is early days, with new coaching staff, new players and we just need to work hard and, hopefully, turn a corner against England,” added the Scarlets hooker.
Wales managed one driving line-out try from Owens, while Scotland conjured up five tries of their own with the mercurial Finn Russell fashioning two for wing Kyle Steyn.
Gatland is looking forward to having Gloucester wing Louis Rees-Zammit fit to return to face England and will be hoping Wales don’t bomb any more chances against the auld enemy.
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“We’re in a little bit of a hole at the moment and now it’s how we fight our way out of it in terms of the development of some of the younger players in the squad,” said Gatland.
“It’s about being tight as a group and honest and critical of the things we know we can fix up. We just have to do it pretty quickly.”
“The review process we need to be as a group to be honest and what changes we need to make, even in personnel and also things we focused on.
“We focused on starting well and it was much better this week. The discipline and penalties was a focus and being more clinical when we created opportunities.
“We improved in one area but there was not much improvement in the other two areas. That is going to be pretty clinical for us moving forward.
“It is something when I have been involved with Wales we have prided ourselves on our discipline, trusting the systems and each other and being clinical when we create opportunities. It is something we need to fix pretty quickly.
“Louis will be available for England and we need to get back on the horse and be tough on ourselves ahead of that game.”
