THE WAYNE PIVAC Q&A
Wales coach Wayne Pivac and debutant Louis Rees-Zammit
WALES fell to a 38-21 defeat against France in Paris on Saturday evening – the fourth defeat in a row for Wayne Pivac’s side.
They were outclassed by a French team that ran in five highquality tries.
It was a concerning setback for Wales ahead of their Six Nations clash with Scotland next weekend.
Here’s what Pivac had to say afterwards...
Question: Was that French team stronger than the one you faced in the Six Nations?
Wayne Pivac: I thought the French team played very well tonight. They thoroughly deserved the result and capitalised on a lot of our errors, which was disappointing from our end.
They certainly got a lot of ball away in the tackle and they punished us in that area a lot.
I thought we started well in both halves but there were too many errors from our side tonight.
Q: Where did it go wrong tonight? WP: There were a lot of aerial battles this evening and we weren’t good enough in the air on the night.
We gave too much ball back to the French in open play. There were also three turnovers at critical times for us.
We have to be a lot better next week. I think there were 12 in total, so it’s something we’ll go away and look at.
We’ll make sure we hold on to possession next week.
Q: What’s the situation with injuries?
WP: Samson Lee was taken off with a head knock, so he’ll go through the normal protocols.
The rest of the changing room is feeling quite sore after the biggest game they’ve played in a long time.
They’ll be better for that game and we needed it before Scotland next week.
Q: What were your thoughts on Antoine Dupont?
WP: He’s a very talented player. In my opinion, he’s world-class and he showed that tonight.
Q: There were two debuts tonight (Louis Rees-Zammit, Sam Parry), what did you make of their effort?
WP: We’re very pleased to get those two out there to experience the Test match arena.
They’ve had a pretty good couple of weeks and are delighted to have been involved in the matchday 23 and get onto the park.
They’re disappointed with the result, like everyone is.
Sam had a good chunk of game time and was heavily involved. Louis, for a young man, now has a taste of the Test arena.
They’ll both be better for those performances.
Q: Where do you need to improve for next week?
WP: I think you could see we were a bit rusty. We’ve come out of lockdown and there hasn’t been a lot of big rugby played.
There were similar comments from the players afterwards. It was a big step up from what they’ve had in the last couple of months.
They’ve not had a lot of rugby and the level is obviously a lot higher, as you saw out there today.
They’ll be better for it, but we will review this performance and look at the areas that we need to work on during the week.
We need to come out with less mistakes. I think we left a couple of tries out there so we need to be a little bit more clinical with those scoring opportunities.
Q: Scotland had a good win yesterday, what did you make of them?
WP: Scotland were certainly very good against Georgia. Hopefully we’ll put a lot more pressure on Scotland than Georgia did but we’ll be looking at our own game.
We’ll be making sure we improve across the board.
Scotland will be a very tough opponent and we’ll have to play a lot better than we did tonight to get a result.
We’ll review Liam’s performance and at the same time we’ll review our own performance.
We’ll check on the bumps and the knocks from the guys tonight before making a selection call in the middle of next week.
Q: How important was it to get that match under your belt ahead of a competitive encounter? WP: It was hugely important for all sides because we’ve had seven months without international rugby. That’s a long period of time for anyone and you saw out there that a lot of our players had had a lack of big matches.
That match was very important for us, so hopefully we’ll be a lot better for that. We need to build on that performance for next week.
I haven’t seen the incident myself, but I’ve been told about it. I have no doubt that the officials in charge will have a look at it if they think there is something in it.