Wales refuse to dwell on hideous record and explain how Scotland hurt them in Six Nations defeat

The Welsh appeared to be heading for a heavy defeat at Murrayfield on the 50-minute mark after Scotland moved 35-8 ahead and on the brink of racking up a record scoreline for the fixture. However, the Welsh dug deep and added three further tries through Ben Thomas, Teddy Williams and Max Llewellyn to add to Blair Murray’s first-half effort.

The fightback was not enough to arrest a competitive winless run that has now stretched to 16 matches, but Sherratt took heart from the way his team pushed Scotland right until the end.

“It was obviously a really brave effort at the end to come back and get two points, but I've seen enough of those games where the reality is they probably thought they'd [Scotland] done enough and maybe dropped off five per cent,” said Sherratt.

“And what I did feel, though, is there was a hell of a lot of effort from our boys in that last 20 minutes. Obviously, it was really nice to get the four-try bonus point, but what would be more pleasing for me was seeing the desperation defending their line. It was almost like it was a one-score game, so the amount of tackles some of our forwards put in in those sets was outstanding.”

Wales were overwhelmed by Scotland in the first half and Sherratt admitted that his players could not get to grips with some of Scotland’s moves.

“We knew two things were going to be really important,” continued Sherratt. “Having a contestable kicking game, and they edged that area, and then I've got to say their defensive contact area is so good.

“They've got very good people over the ball, and we knew if we didn't get that quite right, they'd either get the ball off us or we'd have a pretty slow ball to work off. And that's what happened in the first 40, so it's not something you can overthink. t's pretty clear where the game was.

“We gave their back three some run-ups, and they're really dangerous, and the contact area was probably in their favour in that first half.”

Sherratt refused to dwell on Wales’ long run without success ahead of their Six Nations closing match at home to England on Sunday. “It's not something I'm going to talk about,” he said. “It's there in the background, everyone knows that. But if you start taking the pitch with desperation and anxiety and worrying about where the next win comes from, it's just going to chew you up.

“So, I just think what I can promise the players next week is, I'll do my best to make them a better team. So, they'll come in Monday, I'll be positive, we'll have a plan for England, we'll learn Monday and refresh, and then attack England on Saturday. There's no point in hanging on to the past at all.”

Wales captain Jac Morgan added: “We just probably led a little bit too much work to do after that first half. A couple of inaccuracies, giving Scotland a bit of momentum, but also the effort of the boys in that second half, and especially in that last 20 to keep on going and keep on battling. The character the boys showed us was brilliant.”