And Shanklin, who is expected to be one of the key men in Gareth Jenkins's 30-man Rugby World Cup squad announced on Friday, says the players will get it right on the pitch for the tournament proper.

Wales have just two friendlies left against Argentina and France in Cardiff this month before they head across the English Channel for their Pool B opener against Canada in Nantes on September 9th.

"It was a poor performance but the main thing in the next two games for us are we can put things right. We know where we went wrong and they are things that can be changed quickly. We can sharpen up on our set-piece and although we had little possession, we need to work a bit more on our attack," said Shanklin, who has won 41 caps for Wales.

"It is a kick up the backside for the players and the coaches. It was a warm-up game and although they are internationals, if we are not performing well now, it is not going to matter as long as we perform when we get to World Cup time."

Shanklin put in a valiant defensive shift as Wales only managed 29% of the possession on a red-hot afternoon at Twickenham.

He said: "It seemed that every time that we did get into a good attacking position, our line-out ball was spoilt at scrum with a penalty or free-kick against us. So, we weren't able to build any momentum into our attack and when we did get the ball in attack, we got really scrappy ball and we weren't able to build any phases from it.

"There was only a couple of occasions in the match where we had clean ball, once when Colin (Charvis) went through and the try. We just weren't able to build a game from that."