Wales 23-55 New Zealand: Home head coach Wayne Pivac praises 'match-hardened' All Blacks
- Published
Wales have lost a second successive Autumn Nations Series opening game against New Zealand
Wales head coach Wayne Pivac admitted his side were second best against a "match-hardened" New Zealand side following the 55-23 defeat in Cardiff.
The All Blacks outclassed Wales with an eight-try display that included 26 unanswered second-half points.
After a poor start to 2022 this was a fifth consecutive win for New Zealand, against a Wales side who had not played since South Africa in July.
"New Zealand are match-hardened at Test level," said Pivac.
"We'll get better as we go. With South Africa, we had a good month building up to that as our clubs had been knocked out of competitions early.
"That does help, the more time you have together and New Zealand had a game last week [against Japan]."
Wales trailed 17-0 before recovering to a 29-23 deficit with less than 30 minutes remaining.
But New Zealand scored four tries without any Welsh response, as they shipped 50 points against the All Blacks in Cardiff for the second successive year.
It also equalled the highest amount of points Wales had conceded against New Zealand after Steve Hansen's Welsh side had also coughed up 55 in 2003.
"We were beaten by a better side, particularly in the areas that forwards pride themselves on," added Pivac.
"It's something we'll work hard on. There were a lot of good individual performances but collectively as a group, we needed to be more physical and come off the line.
"That's partly because of where we're at in our season compared to them, having New Zealand first up is always a challenge.
"We leaked 17 points early on. We were very pleased to get back in the game, but then New Zealand are good around half-time and we'd focused on that.
"There were moments in that game to win the scoreboard area around half-time.
"We've got to make sure when we get into a game like that, we keep it in an arm wrestle as long as possible.
"The boys did well to get back into the game and we started the second half as we hoped, scoring first and getting within seven. To release the pressure straight after scoring is something we need to look at.
"Unfortunately after that, we weren't able to exit and that's down to the pressure they put on us.
"That was disappointing to concede and from there, we chased the game a bit and saw the score run away a bit for them."
Wales captain Justin Tipuric left frustrated by New Zealand defeat
Wales have now lost 33 successive matches against New Zealand with the 69-year losing streak extended.
Pivac's side managed to create history in the summer by winning a Test match in South Africa against the Springboks and he insisted there is not an inferiority complex against New Zealand, despite Wales not having beaten the All Blacks since 1953.
"We're certainly not conditioned to losing as they haven't played the All Blacks that much," added Pivac.
"For the younger generation it is about the here and now. Certainly in our camp, we didn't talk about the All Blacks being weak.
"We spoke about how dangerous they'd been since making changes to their backroom staff.
"Any side who puts 50 points on Argentina and 40 on Australia, you've got to respect them."
Wales face Argentina on 12 November before further matches against Georgia and Australia.
Pivac said Ospreys wing Alex Cuthbert should be in contention to face the Pumas next weekend after recovering from injury.
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