I saw the cars leaving Twickenham, all quiet and sad. It just felt like the end of something. Us Welsh fans, we already knew things were bad. But seeing a 48-7 loss happen right in front of you, it’s a different kind of hurt. England were so good, and we just got hammered.
It’s crazy how two teams can be so different now. England just keep winning and winning. Wales? We’ve lost twelve Six Nations games in a row. The players still care, you could see Josh Adams crying and Dewi Lake talking honestly. But caring isn’t the same as winning, is it?
That first half was the real bad part. 29-0 down. I mean, come on. Dan Biggar said it right on TV, it’s not about winning always, it’s about the performance. Putting on that red shirt means something. We weren’t even close to good enough.
The discipline was a mess too. Four yellow cards! Playing with only 13 men for so long. Coach Mike Tandy said it himself, you can’t do that against England and hope for anything. His job is so hard right now, he’s new and his team is still learning. It’s a real tough situation for everyone.
And it’s not just the game, everything feels messy off the field too. The union has problems, teams might disappear. Of course that affects things, how could it not? People need some certainty and right now there isn’t any.
Next up is France in Cardiff. They can’t even sell all the tickets, which says a lot. Tandy will probably keep picking similar guys, like Rees-Zammit at the back. We need the crowd to be loud, but people are losing faith.
So what happens next for Welsh rugby? Everyone’s talking about the same old problems, money and performance. They say fixing it is a long-term project. But driving home from a day like that, the future feels very far away. The road back is going to be a long, slow one.
And you look at the young guys coming through, it’s a lot for them. Thrown into this storm. They’re trying to build something while the whole house feels like it’s shaking. You can’t really learn how to win when losing is the only thing you ever get to know at this level. The confidence just drains away, you see it in the way they sometimes freeze instead of just playing.
Us as fans, we’re changing too I think. The noise isn’t the same. Before, a loss like this would have had everyone raging for a week. Now it’s more of a quiet sigh, like we expected it. That’s maybe the worst part—when shock turns into acceptance. You start to wonder what it would take to really surprise us again, in a good way.
I remember the great teams, not even that long ago really. They had this stubbornness, a kind of smartness in how they played. We’d often win ugly, but we’d win. That identity is just gone now. It’s been replaced by trying not to lose badly, which is a totally different mindset. You can’t build a future on that.
Walking to the car in that cold evening air, no one was really talking. What was there to say? It was all said last year, and the year before. You just get in your car and start the long drive west, the taillights stretching out ahead. All heading back to the same problems, the same questions waiting for us at home. The game was over, but the feeling, that heavy feeling, had a much longer journey ahead.
