{"id":951237,"date":"2026-11-03T16:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T16:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/951237\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T16:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T16:00:11","slug":"nations-championship-wales-defence-coach-peter-murchie-calls-for-vast-improvement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/951237\/","title":{"rendered":"Nations Championship: Wales defence coach Peter Murchie calls for vast improvement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defence coach Peter Murchie has called for a vast improvement in his area of the game when Wales resume their Nations Championship campaign this Saturday against Japan (16:40 GMT).<\/p>\n

Murchie is preparing for his second campaign in charge of defence after joining Steve Tandy’s backroom staff<\/a> from Japan side Kobelco Kobe Steelers.<\/p>\n

In July, Wales defeated Fiji in Cardiff<\/a> but lost to Argentina<\/a> and South Africa,<\/a> with the side missing more than 100 tackles and conceding 15 tries during the three games.<\/p>\n

Murchie says he is expecting a lot more from the Welsh squad during the next month.<\/p>\n

“From my side in the summer, we can be much better,” said Murchie. <\/p>\n

“I wasn’t happy with the defence overall, there’s much more in us and improvements to be made. <\/p>\n

“We want to be extremely tough to break down and play against. <\/p>\n

“The players are ambitious, they want to perform and defensively we want to be more consistent in our performances this November.”<\/p>\n

Murchie linked up with Wales <\/a>after the conclusion of the Japanese Rugby League One season in June.<\/p>\n

So having come into the backroom staff late for his first campaign, Murchie is hoping to make more of an impression.<\/p>\n

“There is a much bigger lead-in than last time,” said Murchie. <\/p>\n

“We’ve got more of a complete coaching group and been able to debrief the summer properly and prepare.<\/p>\n

“We have been out in the regions and it’s been a good preparation to getting the boys into camp.<\/p>\n

“We have had more time to build relationships and prepare this time around.”<\/p>\n

Murchie stated Wales must improve their win ratio having experienced only three victories in the 12-Test Tandy era so far.<\/p>\n

Since November 2025, Wales have beaten Japan, Italy and Fiji and have lost the nine other internationals.<\/p>\n

“We’re here to win Test matches, we’re not here to take part and we’ve spoken about that as a group,” said Murchie.<\/p>\n

“I’m not going to give you a number of wins.<\/p>\n

“We’re also looking for consistency in our performance in terms of delivery and performance in every game.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defence coach Peter Murchie has called for a vast improvement in his area of the game when Wales…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":951238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-951237","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\/951237","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=951237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/951238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}