It makes sense for Pivac to go strong for Georgia
AFTER the New Zealand debacle, Wales simply had to get the show back on the road against Argentina.
Having done so, they simply cannot avoid any slip-ups in a banana skin of a game against Georgia this weekend. Keep the momentum going into the autumn campaign decider with Australia a week further down the line, come through that with a third win, and suddenly it hasn’t been a bad November for Wayne Pivac.
What I’m really pleased about is his team selection. Yes he’s tinkered here and there, but Pivac has avoided the kind of wholesale changes Warren Gatland often made for these autumn games against lesser nations, frequently seeing his team come unstuck.
This fixture hasn’t historically been a great one for Wales. I still remember Sam Davies needing to drop a goal in the last minute to edge past Japan 33-30.
We were unconvincing in overcoming Canada and Tonga. Georgia pushed Wales close in 2017. Worse still we only drew with Fiji in 2010 and lost to Samoa two years on, albeit that was on Rob Howley’s watch with Gatland away on Lions duty.
You can see a pattern there, though, and I remain convinced wholesale changes were a fundamental reason for so many lacklustre showings. Rugby is about combinations, but when you’re not used to playing with one another there is clearly a much greater danger of coming unstuck – particularly when there are so many new faces in other positions, too.
Pivac could have rested his big guns for Australia on Saturday week, but I’m pleased he’s picked most of them because Wales clearly need that consistency and to hone their patterns of play further ahead of taking on the Wallabies.
Having selected the right team for Georgia, what’s imperative next is that Pivac learns the lessons from that abject home loss to Italy in the Six Nations. This is the first opportunity since to prove he has.
Pivac and Wales got their tactics badly wrong that day. What they needed to do was build scoreboard pressure, kick the penalties, make Italian heads drop – and then run away with it in the closing quarter.
I’ve said before, and I will say it again, when you look back at these great Welsh tries from the 1970s, most of them actually came in the final 20 minutes of games after the hard graft had been put in up front.
Yes we had players capable of producing stardust at any one moment in a game, but our game plan was based around keeping the ball in the opposition half, building the points slowly, and then expanding upon that as and when the opportunities arose towards the end.
Against Italy, Wales turned down kickable penalties. In doing so they let them off the hook, because the Azzurri had already lost more than 30 matches on the trot and had they seen the score building against them, a feeling of here we go again would have come about. Instead, they were able to stay in the game and won it with that dazzling try at the end.
I really hope Wales don’t repeat those errors from just a few months back. When they win penalties in kickable positions early on, take the points. Get the score, and momentum, going, make it hard for Georgia to think they can get back into the game.
Adopt that approach and the Georgians will tire. If they have to chase the game, mistakes will be made and gaps will open up for Wales to exploit.
Wales just need to keep chipping away and in the end a reasonably comfortable win, I hope, should be on the cards.
That would make it two out of two ahead of a final showdown with the Wallabies, a team who themselves lost to Italy after making wholesale changes of their own.
I agree with experimenting, giving players a chance, but within the structure of a normal team base. Wholesale changes rarely work, they disrupt flow, pattern, players can often look like strangers during the 80 minutes.
Wales have found that out the hard way down the years. I’m glad Pivac hasn’t mirrored what Gatland used to do.
In picking close to his strongest side, give or take the odd position, he has given Wales a much better chance of avoiding a banana skin of a result.