Wales and Australia will meet at Principality Stadium on Sunday 17 November, KO 4.10pm with Wales looking to reverse the two narrow defeats suffered against Joe Schmidt’s Wallabies in the summer when they toured down under.
“We haven’t thrown in the towel in any way. We can only continue to work as hard as we’ve been doing and hopefully we’ll get across the line,” said Gatland.
“Do I believe in what we’re doing? 100 per cent. The conviction is there and if the conviction is there, it probably takes away a little bit of some of the noise that’s coming towards us.
“My job is making sure we’re all on the same page as a group of coaches and developing some confidence and self-belief in the players in what we’re doing. I’m comfortable with the pressure being on me.”
Looking back at the game against the Fijians, the Wales head coach believes there is plenty to build on as the Autumn matches continue.
“I thought there were some positives on the weekend in terms of our attacking stuff and to keep a pretty strong attacking Fiji side to two tries was good defensively,” added Gatland.
“We were disappointed with the Caleb Muntz’ try after 20 minutes, but we created tries and some other opportunities. I thought some of the attacking stuff that we’d implemented, with the shape we’d worked on, was a real positive in that game.
“The first 20 minutes were very good. We started well. Then we had a period when they were down to 13 men and we didn’t get off our line as quickly as we needed to, we didn’t react in terms of folding.
“Whether we just switched off in that moment, the message to players was that those are the times in international rugby when you get the chance to be ruthless – you’ve got your foot on their throat and you have them under pressure. Unfortunately, we let them off the hook and allowed them to get back in the game.
“If we had gone 21-3 up it could have been a different result. When we reviewed the last maul of the game we didn’t criticise dropping the ball – that happens in rugby. For me, we had a maul that was going forward and we probably needed to keep the ball in.
“Tomos Williams took it out and we had a good hit-up from Blair Murray but the reaction from the forwards in getting around the corner probably wasn’t quick enough to put them under pressure.
“We’ve addressed a number of things we can do better, but I thought there were positives in how we started and played some attacking stuff that put them under pressure.”
The past year has been challenging as a young squad develops and gains experience.
“It’s definitely been a challenging 12 months – a lot of things can change in 12 months. The challenging thing is, when I look at the squad and particularly the backline, apart from Gareth Anscombe, you look at how inexperienced that backline is in terms of caps,” said Gatland.
“We’ve tried to be clear about building and developing this group of youngsters. We know it takes a bit of time, and I’m well aware you’re not always given time and that it’s about results.
“I’ve tried to not shy away from that, and I understand that. Criticism is part of the job and the role. All we can do is keep working hard as we have been doing as coaches and players and hopefully the tide turns pretty soon.”
