However the substitution back-fired and Austria snatched two late goals to leave the Millenium Stadium with maximum points.
"At 0-0 with 15 minutes left I thought 'Well maybe we'll go and try and win it'," said Toshack.
"We put Rob Earnshaw on and took Simon Davies off and maybe that wasn't a particularly intelligent thing to do as we lost two goals afterwards.
"But they did have opportunities before that and we now have to pick ourselves up for Wednesday's return in Vienna.
"If we're honest with ourselves I don't think we can begrudge Austria the result," added Toshack.
"We did have opportunities, their keeper has made a good save from Ryan Giggs in the first half and he has made some excellent saves in the second.
"John Hartson also had a good chance, but we would have to say the Austrians had their chances before they scored.
"They looked fitter and stronger than us, they looked more compact than we did and the result was probably about right.
"But we made things hard for ourselves; our passing wasn't really good enough for this level and we caused uneccessary problems for ourselves.
"We did okay but looked a little bit short of confidence at times - did we really believe in ourselves, particularly when we were coming out with the ball?"