But while accepting the bare facts don’t look good Edwards believes there have been mitigating circumstances for all but two of the scores against his side.

“Statistics can be a bit frustrating at times,” said Edwards. “This time in 2008 we’d conceded two tries. This time in 2010 we’ve conceded two attacking tries when we’ve had 15 players on the park. That was against Scotland.

“But obviously you are judged on the whole performance and, because of the interceptions we’ve given away and conceding two tries while down to 14 players, the stats don’t look good.

“When you look back at them in 10 years time, it will look like we haven’t defended that well.

“But there are only two parts of the campaign that I haven’t been happy with from a defensive point of view.

“There’s the 10 minutes when we were down to 14 against England and the first half against Scotland.”