Gatland: Penalty try verdict was harsh

Wales head coach Warren Gatland said the yellow card issued to Rio Dyer played a large part in his side's 52-16 defeat to South Africa.

Wales were making a good fist of testing the reigning World Champions by trailing only 12-9 in the 33rd minute when Irish referee Andrew Brace made the controversial decision to sin-bin Dyer and award a penalty try.

Gatland said: “Rio was really unlucky as we've looked at the incident by way of various angles and there is no doubt it was a tough call as I don't think it was a penalty try at all. It was a pretty critical movement as up until then, we had done well to stay in the game but that decision and then conceding a try straight from the kick-off was hard to take.”

It was all downhill for Wales after that as the Springboks took full advantage of Welsh woes to secure a record win in the Principality by scoring eight tries to one as the home side struggled to contain the power of their opponents.

Coach: We didn't recover from Rio yellow

Gatland said: “I'm extremely disappointed as they dominated us physically and possibly the only positive was there will be lots of learning to take from the defeat.

“Our box-kicking was effective but we didn't have enough variation to our kicking game and should have explored more opportunities down the short side. I'm pretty pleased with the progress we've made during the summer, especially our physicality in the two games against England but today we just weren't there. In the contact area we will need to be better and today we gave away a few soft tries against a fully-loaded side.

“We've done a lot of work on our scrum but conceding three penalties in the first three scrums prevented us from gaining any momentum but I thought we improved in that area as the game wore on.”

Wales rested a number of the first-choice players ahead of Monday's announcement of their 33 man squad for the World Cup and ultimately the selected side were no match for the Springboks with a number of Welsh participants probably playing themselves off the plane.

Gatland said: “We wanted to give everyone an opportunity of game time to put their hands up for selection as they have been part of a strong squad. Gareth Anscombe and Toby Faletau haven't been able to play through injury but because of their experience they will be in contention for selection when youngsters in a similar position probably wouldn't be.”

South African head coach, Jacques Nienaber said: “The first 20 minutes were a bit of a grind as we needed to wear them down. “Their box-kicking was excellent in the first half and I'm pleased with the win but we've got to get a lot better in terms of cohesion.”