In a game of very fine margins Wayne Pivac’s side slipped to a 27-23 loss against Les Bleus last Saturday. While England will pose a stern challenge Parkes believes his side aren’t far off where they need to be.
“We don’t like losing at home so we want to do well at Twickenham first and then we want to do extremely well when we get back home,” said Parkes.
“We want to go out there and win. We want to do as well as possible for the fans that are coming and those at home.
“It would have been nice to go to Twickenham off the back of a win but that won’t be the case now. It’s always a big game and it’s one we want to do extremely well in.
“[France] showed great character, they did extremely well. They’re an exciting team.
“I guess you can look at the last three times we’ve played them, they’ve had chances to win, in Paris and at the World Cup we gave them a head start. They’re a good side that starts well.
“They were attacking those wide breakdowns pretty hard and fiercely. We know [Shaun Edwards] pretty well and he knows us pretty well, and you can see that he’s having a bit of an influence there at the moment.”
With Wales in the process of developing their gameplan Parkes believes it was always going to take some time to get it right. But the Scarlets man insists all the players are singing off the same hymn sheet and he is confident Pivac’s side will continue to improve from week to week.
He said: “Everybody’s buying in to what we’re trying to do at the moment. I think it’s going to build well and we’ve still got two big games to go.
“It’s starting to come together. The France game was probably the second game in a row we’ve let go unfortunately but that’s the way it is.
“The bounce of the ball, a little bit of momentum here and there, there’s a few what-ifs, but that’s sport.”
