Maybe this is exactly what Welsh rugby needed. Until Ange Capuozzo produced one of the most scintillating runs in Six Nations history to set up a 79th-minute try for Edoardo Padovani, Wales were winning a game they deserved to lose. In front of their fans in Cardiff, and celebrating personal milestones of Alun Wyn Jones and Dan Biggar, the team were sloppy, unimaginative and disjointed. But they were winning.
Wayne Pivac would no doubt have lamented his side’s performance but would have taken solace in the result. Good teams win ugly, or so the adage goes. And though few who have watched Wales stutter across the tournament would argue they are a good side, a win would have put them level on points with England and Scotland.
Then Capuozzo unleashed hell from distance, Padovani dotted down under the posts and Paolo Garbisi coolly converted the extras to consign Wales to a first home defeat by Italy. So rather than ugly wins, Pivac spoke of former glories.
“I think everyone was pretty happy with the Six Nations last year and the way we were heading,” the coach said, referencing Wales’s title-winning campaign in 2021. But therein lies the problem. That triumph, commendable though it was, merely disguised a damaging fault line running through the professional game that now looks wide enough to swallow Pivac whole.
“They’re entitled to their view,” he said when asked to respond to a growing list of critics calling for him to be sacked. “On the basis of the competition we had last year with the squad and what we did over the last three weeks, building depth and having creditable performances against quality opposition, Italy is a backward step.
“It’s probably the lowest point in most of the players’ careers in terms of pulling on the Welsh jersey and the pride they have in doing that. Losing a home game against Italy was not in the script, so it’s very disappointing. It is fine margins, but we have to stay strong and believe in what we are doing. This group does that, and we believe in the players we have.”
It would be unfair to lay the blame solely at Pivac’s door. The Welsh regions are in turmoil. Not one Welsh club is in the top half of the United Rugby Championship with Ospreys the best placed: ninth in a league of 16. This past weekend Scarlets received a 57-12 drubbing at the hands of the Bulls in Pretoria and Cardiff lost 40-3 to the Stormers in Cape Town. The Dragons have not won since last October.
Compounding matters is the sorry state of the under-20 team. A day after Italy claimed their first Six Nations win in seven years, their junior counterparts beat Wales 27-20 in Colwyn Bay. That meant that Wales finished fifth for the third time in six years in this all-important feeder competition and have been surpassed by an impressive Italian youth programme.
With such a dearth of ready‑made talent coming through, and with struggling clubs unable to foster a winning mentality, Pivac has had little choice but to keep faith with an ageing group. Despite missing 626 Tests’ worth of experience at the start of the tournament, Pivac named 10 players older than 30 in his original squad. Perhaps more worrying is that Pivac has yet to name an unchanged team.
With 18 months until the World Cup kicks off in France, the Welsh Rugby Union must make a swift decision. Does it stick with Pivac and place its trust in a coach who has at least procured silverware between two abject years? Or does it cut ties and look to overhaul before it really is too late? Rassie Erasmus needed only 18 months to turn South Africa from underachievers to world champions. Whether Wales could attract someone of his calibre is a separate debate.
Wales head south in July to take on the No 1-ranked Springboks. Both teams have achieved success through similar approaches. Their 2019 World Cup semi-final was 80 minutes of attritional, slogging, sapping rugby. One might have called it ugly. But winning ugly games is what good teams do. Over these past six weeks, Wales have shown they’re anything but.
