Not perfect but Wales will improve, says Pivac
‘We’re under no illusions it is a real step up now. A lot of hard work needs to be done’
Wales 42 Italy 0 Att: 68,782
While understandably satisfied with five points and having held Italy to zero on the scoreboard in Cardiff, there was also an acknowledgement from Wayne Pivac, the Wales head coach, that Saturday’s match against Ireland in Dublin will be a significantly sterner test.
It took Wales, hindered by serious issues at the scrum in the second half, until the 76th minute to secure the bonus-point try against a limp Azzurri side. This was not perfect but for Pivac, in his first Test in charge, it was a decent start.
“Certainly it’s going to be a massive step up from where we’ve been,” Pivac said about the trip to the Aviva Stadium. “It’s been quite a nice start in terms of the Barbarians and getting a lot of firsts out of the way and then having this home match and getting five points.
“That’s been pleasing, but we’re under no illusions it’s a real step up now. A lot of hard work needs to be done because the performance against Italy certainly wasn’t perfect even though we had a good looking scoreline.”
Josh Adams scored his second hat-trick in international rugby, taking his remarkable strike-rate to 10 tries in his past eight Tests, and yet it was Nick Tompkins, the 24-year-old Saracens centre making his debut off the bench, who stole the show with a superb solo try, putting his hand up even on this brief evidence, and against unconvincing opponents, to be the long-term successor to Jonathan Davies in the Welsh 13 shirt.
“He was given an opportunity and he took it with both hands,” said Pivac. “You love to see that on debut. The try he got… we were seeing that at training with his footwork and acceleration. It was pleasing that 68,500 got to see it.”
As for the scrum, which came under pressure in the second half until the introduction of Rob Evans off the bench, Pivac cited Wales’s struggles with conditions affecting their set-piece preparations last week. Tomas Francis, the starting tighthead from the
World Cup who underwent shoulder surgery back in November, was also missed. “We’d done a lot of scrum work, we just didn’t have much success because of the ground we’d been working on. We will review that,” Pivac said.
“There are three things you look at with scrummaging – the opposition and what they’re doing illegally or not, what we’re doing, and what the referee is interpreting. Jonathan Humphreys will go through it with a fine-tooth comb and like any performance we’ll aim to improve it next time.”
Wales led 21-0 by half-time thanks to Adams’s first two tries, the second set up by an outrageous flick-through-the-legs pass by Dan Biggar doing his best impression of Carlos Spencer.
“The boys have given me a bit of stick, I think I could have just passed it normally!” Biggar admitted afterwards. “It was slightly behind me, so I thought I would just flick it and hope for the best. Josh did what he does so well.”
Adams went on to complete his hat-trick before George North, the starter at 13 but now under significant pressure from Tompkins, barged over four minutes from time, with Biggar, on goal-kicking duties ahead of Leigh Halfpenny, also adding three penalties.
Understandably, the Wales flyhalf was full of praise for Adams’s purple patch.
“He’s in a really good vein of form isn’t he?” acknowledged Biggar. “The confidence he is playing with, when you are playing that well the ball just seems to find you as well. He is an out-and-out finisher. If he was in a New Zealand shirt, or something like that, he would be getting even more praise probably because his record is fantastic.”
Wales will need Adams’s clinical edge in Dublin, although the flair they displayed at times against Italy, as Biggar knows, may need to be reined in to grind out a victory away in Ireland, where Wales have not won in the Six Nations since 2012. “As much as we probably want to play as much rugby as possible, next week is probably when you have to roll your sleeves up away from home. Especially when your two away games are in Dublin and at Twickenham. You have to put the hard yards in first before looking to do anything too fancy.”