Despite going down 56-12 to host nation New Zealand in their second group match, Wales did manage to score two tries for the first time against the Black Ferns and provided them with plenty of problems up front.
Now the Wales head coach wants his side to use that power to present the Australians, who pipped Scotland in the other game n Round 2, with even bigger problems.
“What a game it will be. This is why we play the game, we want to play these big games, and we will be challenging the girls to dust themselves off quickly, recover and get back on the horse to be ready for another tough challenge,” said Cunningham.
“Australia are a physical side that come straight at you. It’s something we have to match, and they have great athletes as well.
“But our players gained a huge amount of experience and learnings from facing New Zealand – the intensity at which they play and the ambition they have. It gives us belief that we can go after sides like this, especially up front, if we stick to our structures.
“We have to show that belief and we know we can create opportunities against these teams. There were some golden opportunities there for us today, some of them we will look at when we review this game.
“We always put pride in our performance and I was extremely pleased with how our forwards went. We missed a couple of opportunities from which we could have scored a few more tries.
“I’m extremely proud of the group, how we worked our way back into the game. We used our set piece as a weapon, which gave us penalties and territory, that’s something we will be building on.”
Wales skipper Siwan Lillicrap described the game against the Black Ferns as “brutal” and wants her side to work on their accuracy before facing Australia.
“It was a brutal 80 minutes. When the Black Ferns throw the ball around, their pick-and goes, their offloads, their strength, they are brutal,” said Lillicrap.
“Our set-piece was really dominant, and our pack did exceptionally well in that area. Line outs, driving mauls, scrums. there were a lot of penalties there. We didn’t capitalise on the opportunities in that area and didn’t front up physically enough.
“They pounced on our mistakes, they have deadly wingers that can create stuff from nothing and have deadly players all around the park. They scored a couple of quick tries again in that first half, and in the same second half we let them score two tries which isn’t the way we wanted to start.
“The next few days are going to be crucial to us because we have a six day turn around before we face Australia. We have to dust ourselves off pretty sharpish.
“But don’t write us off, we are fighting for a quarter final space. It’s a huge game next week and we will recover quickly and move forward.
“We are seeing glimpses of what this side is capable of, but we haven’t seen a rounded performance as yet. We are new in the journey, we are new to professional rugby, we have been working hard and I think you can see that.”
