THE WARREN GATLAND Q&A

WALES looked patchy as they stuttered through a 26-15 victory over Italy in Rome.

Warren Gatland had made wholesale changes to his starting side that beat France, 10 in total, and named a new captain in Jonathan Davies.

Here’s what Gatland had to say in his post-match press conference... QUESTION: HOW SATISFIED OR OTHERWISE WERE YOU WITH THE PERFORMANCE TODAY? WARREN GATLAND: Very satisfied with the win. Q: What about the performance within that result? WG: It wasn’t a great performance but sometimes you have to win ugly.

We didn’t play that well but, as I said to the boys in the changing room, we’ll take the win, move on and start thinking about England. Q: OUT OF THE PLAYERS COMING IN, HOW MANY GAVE YOU THE HEADACHE YOU MIGHT HAVE WANTED? WG: For us, there’s a bigger picture that we were looking at for the first two games.

That was having the opportunity to get away for a week with a squad of 31 and replicating what might happen at the World Cup.

If that was a normal year, on reflection, maybe we wouldn’t have made so many changes. But we wanted to give everyone in the 31 an opportunity to be involved in the first two games.

We didn’t play as well as we would have liked. Probably part of that is that we didn’t have the continuity that we would have if we hasn’t made so many changes.

We didn’t really get out of jail, I don’t think it ever looked like we were going to lose the game but we weren’t as accurate as we could have been. Q: WHAT DID YOU MAKE OF THOMAS YOUNG’S PERFORMANCE AND THE BACK ROW AS A WHOLE? WG: I thought the back row were good.

Wainwright was good, Navidi was the man of the match.

I thought the loose forward trio worked really well together.

Thomas was good, particularly in the first half he had a strong performance.

It’s a position where we have competition, that trio is a young trio, they’re pretty inexperienced and they did exceptionally well. Q: WARREN, DO YOU REGRET MAKING SO MANY CHANGES, LOOKING BACK AT IT? WG: I don’t regret anything. I was looking at the bigger picture.

For us as coaches, in our last year, we want to have as good a World Cup as we can.

That was the plan all along. There’s no regret.

We’re two from two and we have a couple of weeks of training before England.

It sets us up nicely for the England match.

A lot of people will be writing us off, which is a good position to be in.

Hopefully we’ll go under the radar, have two good weeks of training and get ourselves mentally and physically right. Q: WERE YOU DISAPPOINTED WITH THE WAY THEY PLAYED THOUGH, TALKING OF STRENGTH IN DEPTH? WG: I think the players are disappointed as much as anyone else.

We said at half-time that we expected Italy would be as tough as they always are in that first half.

Going in at half-time, we hadn’t made a lot of tackles, we had a lot of territory and possession.

We’d created a couple of opportunities, and again in the second half, that we didn’t finish.

That’s the number of changes we made to the side.

We’ll put that game behind us, coming away with a win. That’s the most satisfying thing.

You’re not always brilliant and we weren’t today.

We will be a lot better against England. Q: WERE YOU FORCED TO MAKE CHANGES EARLIER THAN YOU WOULD HAVE INTENDED? WG: We’ve been making changes around about that same time.

Our tight forwards haven’t had a lot of rugby recently.

Nicky Smith hasn’t played a lot, Samson again, our second rows haven’t played a huge amount of rugby this year.

The plan was always to bring people on in that 45-50 minute mark.

I thought the bench was excellent, I thought they came on and gave us some real impact.

They’ve been doing that in recent games as well. Q: ITALY HAS NOW LOST 19 CONSECUTIVE GAMES, DID THEY DESERVE MORE? WG: I thought Italy played exceptionally well. I thought the best part of their game was their defence.

I thought their lineout was good and they made it tough for us.

There’s no doubt they’re a lot fitter than they have been in the past.

They looked to play some rugby and they created a couple of opportunities.

From that point, a lot of people will look to criticise us, but you have to give Italy some credit for how they played.

Thinking back to the autumn, it was a really tight game against Australia for 35 minutes.

They’re a tough team to break down here in Rome.

For me, that’s probably the best Italian performance I’ve seen since I’ve been in charge of Wales. Q: YOU’VE WON 11 GAMES IN A ROW, WHAT WOULD BREAKING THE RECORD AND WINNING A 12TH MEAN TO YOU? WG: We didn’t speak about the record at all this week but we will probably talk about it before England.

If this group of players achieve that, it’ll be something nobody can take away from them.

That’s the nice thing about records, once you’ve achieved it, it’s there for life... until someone else comes and breaks it, obviously!

We’ve got a chance, we’re at home, the stadium will be full, it’ll be some atmosphere at the Principality Stadium.

There will definitely be no lack of motivation in trying to beat England and break that record.