WXV Global Series: Lynn still positive despite Wales' USA setback

Head coach Sean Lynn says he is still seeing the positives despite Wales' narrow WXV defeat to USA.

Wales had gone into the game full of confidence after their eight-try mauling of South Africa, but failed to produce a repeat performance in front of the Cardiff Arms Park faithful.

The first half was encouraging enough, with Wales clawing back a 14-point deficit, but hopes of a second-half resurgence were short-lived amid a string of individual errors that allowed The Eagles to emerge 26-24 winners.

But as Wales head into their week off ahead of next month's double-header against Japan, Lynn said he has seen enough progress.

"I saw some grit, I saw some effort there," he told BBC Sport.

"Before, when we were 21-7 down, I would have seen heads drop, but we're in a good place and came back. Now it's about us learning how to see games off and going back to the simple things we're doing well."

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Lynn had hopes of making it three wins on the bounce after the summer's victory over the Barbarians, but saw Wales fall agonisingly short against a side ranked five places above them at sixth in the world.

"When we came into it [pre-season] at the start of July, we said we're going to be a competitive 80-minute team... we did that today," he said.

"Shame we just didn't come up with the penalty, maybe at the end, but we needed to be better elsewhere around the park.

"We need to look at ourselves and individual errors; we can't play Test match rugby if we make those individual errors, and we all know that.

"We just couldn't keep the ball; we had opportunities to get out of our 22, we had opportunities to go into their 22 and put pressure on."

Wales co-captain Kate Williams was in tears of joy last week, but said the team was "deflated" after their USA showing.

"As a team, we were there at the 60th minute; we just needed to execute and we didn't," she said.

"What happens then is you're just looking at each other, because it's a mistake here, a mistake there; we just needed to come together and do what we're good at, which is being physical and taking it to them.

"This might sound like a big statement, but it didn't feel like a game that they out and out won against us; it felt like a game that we lost, and that's just really frustrating."

Wales will have a week to reflect on such frustrations before returning to camp to prepare for next month's trip to Japan, where they face the Sakura Fifteen in two Tests on 24 and 31 October.