VIEW FROM THE WALES CAMP WARREN GATLAND Q&A

GEORGE North has spoken of ‘a difficult couple of weeks’ and said focusing on Wales v Italy has been ‘a really good thing’ for him.

North ran in two tries in the win against the Azzurri eight days after his coach at Northampton, Alan Gaffney, appeared to suggest he had not wanted to play a club match against Sale.

The Lions wing kept his counsel on the comments which caused something of a media frenzy, but was reported to have been very unhappy about them.

After helping Wales to their Six Nations win, North said: “It’s been a difficult couple of weeks, but it’s been good to be in camp with a real focus.

“International rugby is a tough old place and you have to keep your head on you, focus on the challenges ahead and for me it was a case of looking at Italy and making sure it was full steam ahead.

“Having this game as a focus was a really good thing for me.”

North admitted Wales’ display against the Italians was far from perfect and said improvement would be needed ahead of the final game of the tournament against resurgent France on Saturday.

“It’s been good to get some rugby under my belt individually and as a team we’ve shown glimpses there today,” he added.

“But there were too many errors, too many penalties and that was too high for us. We know we’ve got a big challenge coming up and we’ll have to tighten up before next Saturday.

“If you look at the way they’re playing (France), it’s great.

“They’re playing the sort of rugby you usually expect from France using some big, heavy guys. We need to improve to face them.

“I’m not sure what the penalty count was (against Italy), but it was seven or eight in the first half and with France coming we can’t afford that.

“We’ve had a few results that haven’t gone our way, particularly in Ireland last time out. We didn’t really feel like we fired a shot, but we were still in the game.

“Ireland have won the tournament now, but for us we have targeted bonus-point wins in our last two games to give us the best chance of finishing second.” the past when we’ve made a number of changes. You get a lot of combinations where it’s the first time they have played together.

That cohesion takes a little bit of time. It always looks easier in training, but when you get on the pitch and you are playing in front of a big crowd in international rugby, it just takes a little bit of time. A: I thought the yellow card was fair. We had no problems with the yellow card.

Whether he gets cited as a result, (we’ll see). I was disappointed. I didn’t think if he was going to make the tackle he needed to go that high. It was our penalty, we could have come back for a penalty.

The thing with Liam is he’s such an emotional player. That’s what brings the best out of him.

The way the game was we couldn’t afford potentially, with that time on the clock, something else to happen and him to get another yellow card then a red and put us under pressure.

We saw what happened with Gareth Davies, putting his hand out and getting yellow-carded.

Had Liam done the same thing, that’s a second yellow and a red. It (taking him off ) was about sending a