After a full pre-season with Lynn, players are clearly in good physical shape, but their mindset is a little harder to judge.<\/p>\n
Was a lack of mental toughness the reason Wales were – as Lynn put it – bullied off the park?<\/p>\n
Former Wales captain Siwan Lillicrap says mindset and confidence have got a lot to answer for.<\/p>\n
“Have we been on such a bad streak in the last 18 months that when Wales go behind we struggle?” she said.<\/p>\n
“Winning is a habit, unfortunately we haven’t won much in the last two seasons. I think psychologically as well it’s tough and in those pressure moments we look lost.”<\/p>\n
Players do have have access to a sports psychologist, which Evans says is an invaluable asset in camp. <\/p>\n
“I think you ask any athlete, they probably rely quite heavily on them,” she said.<\/p>\n
“They’re amazing just for team dynamic, making sure that we have those tough conversations in a safe space, but also for individuals that probably would have taken the weekend quite hard.<\/p>\n
“Emotions get the best of us when we’re in a World Cup. They’re the people that you go to to set you off on the right track.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a full pre-season with Lynn, players are clearly in good physical shape, but their mindset is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-96912","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}