Scattergun approach to leave Wales coach

DOMINIC Cummings famously compared Boris Johnson to a shopping trolley, as his ideas careered from one extreme to another.

When it comes to selecting a backrow, Wayne Pivac is not far behind.

Over the past three years, Pivac’s selections and his justifications underpinning them have changed from campaign to campaign.

It’s been hard to keep up, and for those players competing to win the shirt it must be totally confusing.

Let’s begin with the blindside position.

Pivac began his tenure in search of a hybrid type number six, a tall lineout option who could carry the ball effectively. Long-term injury to Aaron Shingler meant that Pivac has had to develop a rangy number six. He has flirted with Christ Tshiunza without committing to it. Seven months ago, Seb Davies was brought into the team to face France’s juggernaut pack because of his size and physicality.

But that line of thought was abandoned pretty quickly when he was dropped for the summer tour to South Africa.

Indeed, Pivac went back to the future for the series against the Springboks by turning to the old fashioned attributes of a traditional blindside in Dan Lydiate.

He did what he does extremely well against South Africa, offering gain line physicality. It worked very well.

Four months later, Wales are playing New Zealand and Pivac decides to go with Justin Tipuric at blindside. A genuine openside if there was one.

He may have an all-court game but smashing people on the gain line is not his forte. For Argentina today, I’m not the slightest bit surprised there is another sharp deviation in selection policy and Lydiate is brought back to provide some physicality that actually, Wales needed all along. The selection of various players in the blindside position underlines the changeable whims in the coach’s thinking. The openside position has been scattergun.

It started when Jac Morgan was omitted from Wales’ summer squad after his breakthrough year with the Scarlets. The reason for him being left out was that rugby was evolving in a direction that meant the jackal was becoming a less important aspect of the game. Pivac doubled down on that in the autumn of 2021. This time it was Tommy Reffell who was publicly told that because he played for the Tigers he had not demonstrated the skills