Jason Strange’s Six Nations champions looked to be cruising towards victory after a dream 20 minutes. Tries from Shaun Evans, Keelan Giles and Reuben Morgan-Williams put Wales 17-0 up. But Ireland charged back to claim a 26-20 lead.
Giles snuck in for his second two minutes from time, but Jarrod Evans was off-target with the tricky conversion, meaning Ireland took the spoils in the opener. But Wales can still make the semi-finals of they beat Georgia and new Zealand in their next pool matches. And captain Phillips has called on his side to unite and fight-back.
He said: “It’s a bitter pill to swallow, the boys are all really disappointed. We knew Ireland would be better than they were in the Six Nations when we beat them and they proved that. Our discipline let us down and we;re going to have to work on that on the training field.
“It was a similar story in the Six Nations, they took the lead against us but then we fought-back. The boys are disappointed and we have plenty to work-on, but we have more games to play and make up for it. Ireland played well and we have to accept that, they were the better team on the day.
“We’re a close-knit team and that will be put to the rest now over the coming days. We’ll go back, look at the game, find out where we need to improve and work hard to put things right.”
