He said: "There was a lot of effort out there, the guys were dead on their feet at the end, but we were desperate for some good ball which we could use to really nail the French.
"We know we are capable of breaking defences, though it might not seem that way right now, but we are if the ball is quick and we're going forward. We need forward momentum right through the team, but especially in the backs, and that's something that is just not there at the moment.
"We had nothing to work off on the front foot against France, everything we got was either static or behind us and that meant their defence was able to come and meet us every time, which leaves you with no room to move and looking poor.
"We got a lot of ball on the front foot in 1999, that was the difference. That's in the past now, we move on, but we are desperate to get that same momentum because we know we have the players capable of breaching a team's defence. But, it's easy for others to read a team's attack when they're static and struggling to find depth to come onto the ball.
"The scrum was good this week," he admitted, "but when you look at the French and the way they hit-and-pass, hit-and-pass, taking tackles on their terms and always having someone taking it from them and moving on. That's how you create the "go-forward" that we talk about - it's through the phases where we need to create the momentum. France were good at popping ball out of half-tackles, that's perfect ball, but we weren't able to do that effectively."
After playing two Tests on consecutive weekends the squad now have a fortnight's break before Wales visit Murrayfield on Saturday week. "I did find it quite tough playing back-to-back internationals at that intensity," he admitted. "It took a couple of days to get over the bumps and bruises of last week, and we trained hard this week, but we have two weeks now so that should give us days to recover and, hopefully, freshen everyone up ready for the next one."