{"id":465306,"date":"2026-02-07T23:42:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T23:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/465306\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T23:42:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T23:42:15","slug":"we-let-people-down-dewi-lake-apologises-to-wales-fans-after-england-thrashing-wales-rugby-union-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/465306\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We let people down\u2019: Dewi Lake apologises to Wales fans after England thrashing | Wales rugby union team"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wales captain, Dewi Lake, has apologised to Welsh supporters for \u201cletting them down\u201d after his team\u2019s comprehensive 48-7 defeat by England<\/a>. The visitors were second best in all departments and have now lost 22 of their last 24 Test matches with a buoyant France heading for Cardiff next Sunday in ominous form.<\/p>\n

Lake did not mince his words after his team\u2019s latest heavy loss which saw them concede seven tries and receive four yellow cards. \u201cWe let ourselves down, we let people down,\u201d he said. \u201cWe spoke all week about what we were going to produce and we didn\u2019t do it. There is no other way to say it \u2013 we\u2019re massively disappointed with what we put on the field today.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery voice matters to us at the minute, every fan in a seat that can get behind us. We said we would get the fans on their feet and we didn\u2019t today. We put ourselves under pressure, the penalty count and the yellow cards are down to us. We will be better next week. This group will fight for each other all day, there is never a question of effort. [But] we weren\u2019t accurate enough when we had opportunities. You can\u2019t do that against one of the form teams in world rugby.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Wales head coach, Steve Tandy, was similarly dismayed. \u201cWe are bitterly disappointed. We were inaccurate and couldn\u2019t get any momentum. Playing England with 15 men is tough enough. Playing with 13 men for almost 20 minutes is hard. We are not a good enough team to have these inaccuracies. Even though we are 11th in the world and we came up against the third team in the world we expect more of ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

England\u2019s Steve Borthwick<\/a>, in contrast, was happy enough with many aspects of his side\u2019s performance as they extended their winning run to 12 in a row. \u201cI thought defensively we were excellent, I thought our kicking game was excellent,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat was pleasing is that we created lots of opportunities. But in the second half we didn\u2019t convert those opportunities in the way we\u2019d have liked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Borthwick also paid tribute to Henry Arundell, whose hat-trick of first-half tries extended his tally for England to 11 in 12 Tests. \u201cWe all know Henry is a player who has an incredible ability running with the ball and his ability to find a way to the try line is excellent,\u201d the head coach said. \u201cWhat I have been really impressed is over the last number of months is his attitude to go and improve other aspects of his game. He has worked exceptionally hard and has come back to the Six Nations<\/a> an even better player.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jamie George, who led out the team with regular captain Maro Itoje starting on the bench, also suggested England were now in a handy position heading into next Saturday\u2019s Calcutta Cup game at Murrayfield. \u201cRegardless of who we were playing next week it\u2019s a brilliant platform. We wanted to start with a bang and I thought we did that today.\u201d<\/p>\n

George Ford, the man of the match, also believes there is more to come from England and praised the first half efforts of his pack. \u201cThe start of a Test match is always massive. I thought the boys did that well \u2026 we were able to dominate territory because of the boys up front. We are just trying to put bits of our game together, the more attacking opportunities we create the more we should take.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wales captain, Dewi Lake, has apologised to Welsh supporters for \u201cletting them down\u201d after his team\u2019s comprehensive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-465306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}