Wales are one win from the Triple Crown – a victory which would put them within touching distance of Grand Slam glory, an achievement the Italy and Viadana flanker believes Warren Gatland’s men are good enough to pull off.
Sole said: “I hope they go on and do well in the rest of the championship. Their backs are really good and their forwards stepped up to the mark.
“I was fortunate to have a couple of weeks training under Warren at Waikato. He’s a great coach and I’m not surprised by his success with Wales. He knows what he wants and will tell you what he wants.”
Sole saw his Italian teammates produce a second-half performance to forget as Wales ran in four unanswered tries.
But Sole thinks his side threatened the home team in the opening exchanges and could have got on the scoreboard and altered the course of the match.
“We should have scored that try before half-time and that would have put us in the lead. But we didn’t take our opportunity. Then the second half was one to forget. They ran the ball and we got penalised. They capitalised and destroyed us and our gameplan fell apart.
“They got their second try soon after the break and scored quickly again. You only have to look at the statistics. We made 135 tackles and they made 50 – you can’t play 80 minutes like that because guys are bound to miss tackles.
“We’ll regroup and look at our mistakes on the video. We need to get this defeat out of our minds because we’ve got France coming up. They will be as dangerous as Wales.”
