The former Wales skipper put in a stellar 80 minute performance in the 27-18 defeat and is now looking forward to the next assignment against Scotland at Murrayfield in two weeks time.
“I am not playing the game to lose, I promise you that, and if we didn’t believe in this group of players, there would be no point going out on the pitch,” said Jenkins.
“We understand it is not just going to fall into place for us, we are going to have to work extremely hard. The Six Nations is a very competitive competition.
“But Ireland are one of the top teams in the world and if we are competing with them we are in a good place at the moment. The learnings we have taken individually and as a team are going to be huge for us – you learn a lot when times are hard.
“We’re obviously disappointed with the result. It’s never nice losing, especially in your home stadium, but there were some real positives in that performance.
“The boys have picked up our new shape, and that’s something we can really look forward to getting better at moving forward. We’re going to work hard to make sure we come out the other side of results, because it is all about results.”
Head coach Matt Sherratt has told his players to look forward rather than get dragged into what has gone on before and with more time to prepare for the trip to Edinburgh everyone believes the team can only improve.
“Welsh rugby owes a huge amount to Warren Gatland. It was awesome for me to watch Wales being successful growing up, as well as giving me the opportunity to get my first cap – I’ll be forever grateful for that,” said Jenkins.
“But Matt has come in, and he is an awesome attack coach in terms of detail. He gives you real clarity as a group, and it has also been good bringing in TRT (Rhys Thomas), who’s a great coach and a great guy as well.
“There is confidence in terms of the way we played and just listening to how the crowd were, I think they all saw that as well. We really wanted to show the crowd how much we wanted it in terms of our emotion and how proud we are to play for Wales.
“I hope we did that. There were some difficult conversations last year, but we are just pushing to move forward.”
