How Wales can really challenge France by building upon flickers of attacking intent shown against England

As the dust settled on Wales' narrow defeat to England at Twickenham last week, there was an inescapable feeling that neither team were on the same level as table-topping France.

Eddie Jones appeared to think differently, of course.

"There are three teams that can win it now and we are one of those three teams," he said afterwards.

"So we've got a lot more belief than the three teams that can't win it. We're in a good position. We're in charge of our own destiny."

But those in attendance at HQ likely wouldn't be rushing to put Jones' 'new England' - which so far seems less than the sum of its parts in attack - in the same bracket as France, or even Ireland in the top tier of the Six Nations.

So, to say Wales face a step-up in quality when they welcome France to Cardiff next week might be something of a blindingly obvious statement.

Undoubtedly, the need to build upon the second-half improvements at Twickenham cannot be understated.

"You can't in Test match rugby give teams a 17-point head start," said Wales centre Jonathan Davies this week.

"It cost us and there is huge frustration about that. It's something that has been highlighted. We've given ourselves too much to do later in games."

But, for periods against England, Wales' attack looked to be running smoothly. The question is how they turn that into an 80-minute performance against the French?

To put it bluntly, if they start as slowly as they did at Twickenham, the scoreline will be considerably worse than just 17-0.

"We want to play with tempo and speed," added Davies. "With that, you have to be accurate. There were periods where we controlled the ball and it was pretty positive. We did some good stuff, but it's a results-based game and ultimately we didn't get