McBryde admits that the pain of the 29-18 loss in London is more keenly felt within the Wales camp than anywhere else but he knows that a positive response is the only way they stand a chance of putting things right in the final round of the RBS 6 Nations.
“It’s a quick turnaround so we can’t dwell too long on the performance against England, as disappointing as it was,” said McBryde.
“There’s nobody more disappointed than the players and the coaches in the fact that we haven’t delivered. There was a big expectancy of us and we didn’t live up to it against Ireland and we didn’t live up to it against England.
“That expectancy will have grown for our last home game against Scotland and we can’t shy away from it. We’ve got to answer some questions, but we can only do that on the field.
“Scotland will be hurting after their game against France, a game they should have won. They’ve made improvements and Scott Johnson is returning to Wales so it will be a big challenge.
“We know where we fell down against England. We know we weren’t good enough in our execution and our composure. We didn’t really give ourselves any sort of platform to work off. We created some opportunities early on that we didn’t take and we’ve fallen foul of the referee at the scrum.
“A lot of those things are within our control and we’re not looking outside of the squad with regards to finding the answers.”
Wales were on the wrong end of a number of decisions at scrum time on Saturday and former hooker McBryde knows that a similar scenario against the Scots won’t help them end the Championship on a high.
Gethin Jenkins was yellow carded on the day that he equalled Stephen Jones’ record of 104 Wales caps but McBryde was disappointed with the way in which the Cardiff Blues prop was ordered off as he felt the scrum was an even area of battle at RFU HQ.
“It is just something we have got to get better at doing in managing the referee and making sure we have got absolute clarity with regards to what he is looking at,” added McBryde.
“As far as I see it, it was a hugely-competitive area of the game. There was only one re-set. We were dominant, we were going forward in a number of those scrums, yet the decision went against us. The unfortunate thing is that one man has been singled out, and everyone could see the dejection on Gethin’s face when he came off – he didn’t know what else he could have done.
“Scrum, line-out, contact area, those are the things that really you have got to be at your best, especially when you come up against a team who are gunning for you, as are all the teams. If you are champions, you know you are going to have to be at your best week in, week out, and, unfortunately, we haven’t been.”
