Justin Burnell was in no mood to gloss over London Welsh’s shortcomings after the 46-8 defeat to Sale Sharks.

Trailing by ten points with 15 minutes to go, Welsh harboured hopes of taking something from their trip north, perhaps even a first win.

But the Exiles gifted the home side a scrum five metres from their own tryline, from which Tom Arscott duly crossed for the game’s decisive score.

“You’ve got to be realistic, the scoreline doesn’t lie,” said Burnell.

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“It’s all very well playing for 65 minutes, but you need to be playing for 80 minutes, and that’s what we’ve got to do.

“We were still in it; we made some mistakes in crucial areas early on and then it gets to a decisive moment.

“You have a crucial lapse in concentration, we lose possession and in all fairness they capitalised. Once they’re on the front foot their tails are up and the floodgates opened.

“The hardest part was to be there or thereabouts and see an improvement up until about 65 minutes, but then straight away, the same old story, people just dropping off.

“The individual errors was the biggest disappointment and at this level, the Aviva Premiership, you make a mistake you will be punished.”

Welsh continued to take the fight to the home side after Arscott’s try, but a crazy final four minutes saw the visitors leak three further tries.

“I thought we fought back. We got into the right zones, we just didn’t capitalise on it and that’s the biggest learning curve for us,” said Burnell.

“You’ve got to learn from it continuously. It’s three games in, but we don’t want to be having this conversation after five or six games. We’ve got to make a statement.”

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