The 31-7 defeat was the third in a row in this season’s Guinness Six Nations championship and leaves Wales needing to beat France and Italy at home to avoid a potential first whitewash since 2003.
All thoughts now turn to welcoming France to the Principality Stadium in Round 4 on Sunday, 10 March, with Les Bleus looking to bounce back from their draw with Italy in Lille last weekend.
“In fairness to Italy, they stayed in the fight, didn’t they. France could have been 20 points in front with the dominance they had, particularly in that first half, hammering at Italy in their 22, but Italy were able to keep them out,” said Gatland.
“There is no doubt that the red card had a significant influence on the game and then Italy got stronger. Some of those French forwards looked pretty tired at the end of the first half, and some of them in the second half as well, which allowed Italy to get back in the game.
“It was probably no different tactically from how we’ve played against France in the past, having the same sort of mindset. They are going to come pretty hard at you early on, so you’ve got to stay in the battle and try and negate the physical dominance of their huge forwards.
“Italy brought good line speed to their game, and the idea then is to hopefully take advantage when some of their forwards do begin to tire a bit.
“Antoine Dupont is a massive loss for them. I’ve seen some clips of him in the Sevens and the impact that he is already having in that programme.
“That’s probably leadership and experience, that ability for probably the best player in the world at the moment to be able to change a game. He’s definitely a big loss to them.”
Looking back on the defeat in Dublin, Gatland believes the experience will eventually lead to his young team becoming better.
“Test match rugby is all about winning, it’s all about performing. The expectation we have is all on ourselves,” he added.
“We’ve had a couple of close games where we showed some promise and then we came up against probably the best team in the world at the moment. That should have showed probably the difference where the two sides are at the moment.
“We’ve got an opportunity in the next couple of games to go out there, keep working hard and improving. Hopefully, in the next two games we can come away with wins.
“I cannot question the effort of the players. I said afterwards we were probably outmuscled a little bit on both sides of the ball, and that’s probably a reflection of the experience and age difference at the moment.
“Looking at the two teams when we were warming up, as well as the size and shape of the Irish 23, I think 17 of their 23 came from Leinster, so they’ve got continuity and consistency as a team. That’s just where we’re at.
“We know what a quality side Ireland are. In terms of their preparation and being together, they’re probably quite a long way ahead of us at the moment, and that’s something for us to keep working hard on.
“We identified some opportunities to score, but it was disappointing in terms of the scoreline at the end. We put in some really good defensive sets, and some things we did well in terms of creating, but we’ve just got to be more accurate.”
