FEW POSITIVES FOR PIVAC TO TAKE AFTER A WOEFUL START
IN Dublin’s fair city, it was never a case of alive, alive oh for hapless Wales as they crashed to a dispiriting Six Nations defeat against Ireland.
In fact, there was little life at all in Wayne Pivac’s team.
The setback will prompt much fretting in our homeland, coming as it did after Byron Hayward’s Wales U20s team shipped 50 points against their Irish counterparts on Friday evening.
And before those two horrors, the Welsh regions went through the European matches without winning a single game on the field.
Injuries, it is fair to say, only partly explain what is going wrong.
Here are the winners and losers from the Six Nations opening weekend.
WINNERS Taine Basham
What is to be said?
When Wales lost to Scotland at Murrayfield in 2007, they barely fired a shot in an atrocious match of no tries. Only one visiting player emerged with his reputation enhanced. Alun Wyn Jones piled up multiple tackles that day, stubbornly refusing to wilt. Someone said that for much of the match he appeared to be taking on the Scots on his own.
Fast-forward to Dublin this weekend and Taine Basham showed he was made of the right stuff as well.
Some rugby players disappear when the going gets tough.
A few take a different route.
They need a mere whiff of adversity to grow in stature and performance.
Basham is evidently out of the latter group.
He tackled his heart out at the Aviva Stadium and also found the time and energy to make an impact with ball in hand and contest the breakdown. The great-great grandson of former European boxing champion Johnny Basham rounded off his effort with a defiant late punch in the form of a try.
Had everyone in the Wales team played as well as he played, the men in red might have stood more chance against opponents who seemed on a mission to run the reigning Six Nations champions off their feet.
There wasn’t much else for Wayne Pivac to be encouraged by.
Wales couldn’t live with Ireland’s ability to play at pace and were second best in terms of physicality.
They were inaccurate in their passing, conceded too many penalties and made mistakes with the experiment of playing Josh Adams in the centre backfiring hopelessly.
Amid all this, Basham’s effort said much.
So far in his short international career, he has barely made a mistake.
“He has got everything,” Sam Warburton said in the build-up to the Ireland game.
Nothing happened on Saturday to bring that suggestion into question.
On a day of gloom for the side in red, Basham’s display was at least one positive for Pivac.
Ireland
They look a proper side who have taken their game dramatically forward.
Confidence oozed out of them at every point and why wouldn’t it after their win over New Zealand in the autumn? Maybe that was the most emphatic nine-point win there has ever been.
Ireland are playing a rapid game of many passes but it is underpinned by a solid scrum, a reliable line-out and power up front.
France in Paris this week will tell us more about Andy Farrell’s team. But on Saturday’s evidence they are building a serious head of steam.
Will Rowlands
He just sneaks onto this list because his was a truly wholehearted effort at the core of the Welsh pack.
The Dragons player did what he could to slow Irish ball early on and he never stopped making tackles, finishing with 17 and not one missed. It was a particularly gutsy effort from the man brought in to replace Alun Wyn Jones.
In defence, Nick Tompkins also did well.
Scotland
Their win over England owed much to grit, character and old-fashioned resolve.
The visitors to Murrayfield dominated territory and possession.
But Gregor Townsend’s side found a way.
That will be the challenge for Wales when they face them in Cardiff in round two.
LOSERS Welsh Rugby Union
The words ‘roost’, ‘home’, ‘coming’, ‘to’ and ‘chickens’ come to mind, though not necessarily in that order.
No-one can say the warning signs were not there, with the regions losing every time they took the field in this season’s European competitions, while every one of Ireland’s provinces qualified for the knockout stage of the Heineken Champions Cup.
Did anyone really feel the run of misery wouldn’t seep into Wales’ Six Nations effort, particularly with so many front-line players missing?
Saturday would have woken up those who did feel that way.
For years, Warren Gatland’s stewardship of the national team masked the problems at regional level, where the four Welsh teams regularly have to take on significantly better-funded opponents.
Wales did incredibly well to win a title under Pivac last term, helped by a series of red cards in opposition ranks.
But with the regions struggling, the outlook for ongoing success didn’t look good.
This term has been woeful to date. The regions are not helped by having to pay back over three years a loan taken out by the WRU. The governing body’s chief Steve Phillips has revealed the terms of the arrangement are in the process of being renegotiated, but the whole thing has dragged on and the assumption is the four professional sides will continue to find the financial going tough.
Ireland, meantime, are reaping the rewards of investing big-time in professional rugby over a long period and laying down the conditions for the game there to thrive at all levels.
The question remains in Wales: is there no union cash put aside for a rainy day? If there is, it needs to be pumped into the pro game in this part of the world pretty sharpish because, if anyone on the WRU cares to pull back the curtains, a storm is raging outside.
Better still, someone needs to press the reset button on the funding arrangements for the professional game in Wales, full stop. Pressing on regardless shouldn’t be an option.
Wayne Pivac
He has credit in the bank after guiding Wales to a Six Nations title last season.
And it is fair to say a brains trust of Warren Gatland, Steve Hansen and Graham Henry might have struggled for Wales to be competitive at the Aviva Stadium given the number of important players who were missing.
But the performance was still desperately poor.
Wales were overrun at forward, lacked craft in key areas behind and the experiment of playing Adams in the centre was a disaster.
Why go down such a road in the first place when there were specialist midfield alternatives in Owen Watkin and Jonathan Davies?
There is also a case for believing Ross Moriarty should have figured in the back row from the start.
And Dewi Lake as starting hooker? He would add a lot around the field, but his darts have to be on the money.
Would those changes have brought about a different result? Or would it just have been the rugby equivalent of rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic? Whatever, Wales’ display in the Irish capital was lamentable.
Josh Adams
You felt sorry for him.
He is a world-class wing who scores tries, is good in the air and grafts tirelessly. Playing in the centre, he was like a fish on land.
He tried his best and it was noticeable that he kept battling hard even if, deep down, he probably knew it was never going to be his day.
For character alone, he deserved an extra mark or two.
But it was weird for the coaches to change his position and leave him so exposed for a game against one of the best sides in the world.
Pivac should consider him as a wing who can cover full-back at Test level in an emergency.
Any experiments with him in the centre should be confined to summer or autumn friendlies or in the regional game if the coaches agree. It’s not complicated.
Wales U20s
The bad news started for Welsh rugby on Friday evening, when Wales were wiped out by Ireland in the U20 Six Nations.
They resembled a team from schoolboy rugby who had the misfortune to come up against powerful opponents who seemed to have sneaked their chemistry teacher and their maths master into their team.
The Irish side’s physicality was on a different level and the Welsh defence couldn’t cope, with Ethan Fackrell (25 tackles) and Alex Mann (20 hits) notable exceptions to the rule.
Ireland also played the game at pace, the story of the weekend.
They were more accurate than their opponents and had they not blown two or three chances could have scored 70 points.
As it was they settled for a 53-5 success.
As well as Fackrell and Mann, Oli Andrews showed potential on the wing and Cameron Winnett is a serious prospect. But Wales as a team were steamrollered.
They found the going tough last season and the question for the WRU is what is going wrong.
It’s important they come up with answers quickly.