Woeful discipline, failure to and frail in defence... harsh

FIVE matches into the Steve Tandy era, the new Wales coach had to admit on Saturday evening after his side were comfortably beaten by England at Twickenham - that discipline, or rather the lack of it, was becoming a concerning trend.

- By BEN JAMES

England ruthlessly exposed Wales' defensive weaknesses

"We're hard on ourselves," said Tandy in Twickenham after the 48-7 defeat.

"We're working tirelessly on how to do that, picking that up.

"It's something you've got to keep going at. You can't run away from it or hide from it.

"We'll go back, look at it and the reasons why and learn as a group why we feel we're under that type of pressure and giving away those sorts of penalties.

"This group is so hardworking and has some unbelievable skills but, under those pressure moments, we have to think clearly and be really accurate."

But 16 penalties - 10 conceded in the first 21 minutes ultimately ended the match as a contest.

It is not a new phenomenon for Wales.

Since the match against Argentina, the number of penalties conceded has risen steadily.

Wales conceded eight in their first game under Tandy, then 11 and 14 in the next two.

By the end of the autumn, it was 16.

That makes it 65 penalties conceded in five matches.

Obviously, those penalties are for a number of things - with offside tending to be the most frequent offence.

Wales are also being penalised far more in their own half, which is indicative of the time they're spending in that area of the field.

Only against New Zealand, a match in which Wales by and large managed to almost give as good as they got, did they concede as many penalties in the opposition half as their own.

This lack of discipline has a consequence - with Wales having picked up 10 yellows and one 20-minute red card over those five games.

There's been about 90 minutes that Wales have played with 14 men under Tandy.

The combined score line is 19-77 in the favour of the opposition.

In fairness, the 300-odd minutes when Wales have had a full complement is 59-161 so not a great deal better.