Steve Tandy says Wales should have been more ruthless against Japan, with the All Blacks coming to Cardiff next.
Wales ran in four tries in a 28-21 bonus-point win at the Principality Stadium on Saturday, but Japan stayed in touch until the final minutes.
Tandy said it was “obviously great to get a win”, but added: “There’s probably elements of performance we definitely would have liked to have been better.”
‘We give them enough to stay in the game’
He felt Wales let Japan off the hook after making line breaks, and said: “I thought we could have been more ruthless when we created line breaks, that next sort of breakdown to probably break Japan a little bit.”
He added: “But we give them enough to stay in the game.”
Tandy saw a positive in it: “There’s definitely elements that we need to work on. But it’s always better to do that off the back of a bonus point win.”
Two or three sessions together
He put Wales’ poor return from the Japan 22 partly down to how little time the squad has had together.
He said: “In fairness, when you look at it on the whole, you get probably two or three sessions with the whole team.”
He added: “But obviously when we do get there, we want to be more ruthless.”
Lineout: ‘You have to tip your hat’
Tandy admitted the lineout “was a problem” against Japan, as captain Dewi Lake did, but said he has “every confidence” in it.
He said: “I thought Japan’s line-out defence we knew was going to be good. But also it’s maybe about a call, a throw, a lift, there’s so many dynamics to the line-out.”
He pointed to the summer Test against South Africa, when he said Wales “won all the balls” on their own throw.
The All Blacks are “a brilliant line-out defence team themselves”, he said, and added: “It’s just something we know we’ll have to focus on and be better at next week.”
All Blacks next
Wales host New Zealand next Saturday afternoon, with Australia the following week.
Josh Adams scored twice against Japan, and Ospreys fly-half Dan Edwards came off the bench to kick the final conversion.
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