Knives out for Pivac...
We've been here before...
...Wales Online
.......
As the ink dried on Monday's Western Mail on December 12, 1988, the back page was headed by a simple message.
'R.I.P WALES'.
Defeat to Romania had left the national paper questioning where exactly Welsh rugby went from there. Two of Welsh rugby's favourites sons, both sadly lost in 2022, offered their own verdict on a dismal day for Wales.
"We're playing a style of rugby which is five years out of date," exclaimed Eddie Butler.
"The last 25 minutes were the worst in Welsh history," added Phil Bennett. "I've never seen such an inept display by Wales at Cardiff."
Inside the paper ran the following words: "The whole of Welsh rugby should hang its head in shame after what happened against Romania at the Arms Park.
"The players and selectors may be the easiest and most popular targets for the brickbats, but everyone connected with the game in Wales, the archaic WRU, their member clubs and the so-called fans, should share the humiliation of last weekend.
"Like a rudderless ship, rugby has run aground in Wales and there is no one who appears capable of refloating it at present. In nine alarming months Welsh fortunes have plummeted to an all time low."
The more things change, the more they stay the same. As Wayne Pivac's Wales sunk to their worst defeat in the professional era with a insipid loss to Georgia, the mind couldn't help but be drawn to past humiliations.
Romania, Canada, Western Samoa and, perhaps the only one that gets close to Georgia since the game went professional, Fiji in Nantes. All days we'd rather forget.
Losing to Georgia in Cardiff, months after falling to Italy in the capital for the first time, might just be worse than any of them. Those two defeats, uncharted territory even in the up and down world of Welsh rugby, so close together can't help but leave you numb.
All of the above from 1988 couldn't be more pertinent. Wales' style of play against Georgia looked dated and predictable, as it often has in the past three years, while they finished the game with such a lack of impetus and fight that a Georgian victory began to feel like a formality at a certain point past the hour-mark.
More so, it's hard to see where the game really goes next in Wales. Welsh rugby can have form for being a little too reactionary, but it's hardly overkill to express grave concern over the direction rugby is heading in here.
Only a matter of weeks ago, the member clubs blocked another attempt to modernise and reform Welsh Rugby Union governance with the option to appoint an independent chair. That follows the loss of key figures like Amanda Blanc and Andrew Williams from the Welsh game, who brought years of high-level business experience.
Add in the fact that the four professional sides and the WRU have been at loggerheads for the best part of a year, continuing to hinder the on-field performances and off-field interest, and it's not a pretty picture wherever you look.
Thirty-four years on from Jonathan Davies raising his concerns before heading north, Welsh rugby is still archaic. That much is clear.
Getting rid of Pivac and his coaching ticket wouldn't begin to solve those problems - there is unfortunately no single golden bullet - but those things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive as some seem to think. The performance alone on Saturday suggests to me that there is no real way of coming back from this for Pivac.
This wasn't the performance of a side chomping at the bit to leave everything out there for their coach, with Sam Warburton questioning if there's some sort of "deeper, underlying issues" there. To borrow an overused footballing parlance, did it look like the dressing room had been lost?
Wales scored the last of their points in the 24th minute and then proceeded to let Georgia grow in confidence. It's questionable whether the Georgians believed they had a chance after Jac Morgan's second try, but they certainly believed as Wales continued to not fire any shots throughout the match.
They looked like a group of players not really trusting their instincts, unaware of their DNA. When they got dragged into a dogfight, they didn't seem to know the way out.
Ultimately, there wasn't one. As Bryan Habana said, "No-one knew what to do".
Wales' attacking intentions remain hard to pinpoint. Their best performances have often come from a pragmatic style of play, while the more complex and free-flowing patterns Pivac has tried to push have been based on too many important variables - such as winning collisions and breakdowns with minimal bodies committed - to trouble Test defences.
The end result is a mess of predictable overplaying in the middle third of the pitch.
Defensively, Wales are capable of fronting up when certain teams - such as Argentina and South Africa - come at them with one-up runners and sheer physicality, but they're more vulnerable to footwork in the tight and ball movement, as shown by New Zealand's demolition job at the start of the autumn.
Ten months out from the World Cup, the trajectory seems fairly clear. Objectively good performances from Pivac's Wales have been few and far between, with the best two perhaps being defeats in France and South Africa.
One typified an attacking style rarely seen working before or since, the other a gritty show of pragmatism that should be the baseline performance for Wales, rather than a novelty once or twice a campaign.
The snippets in press conferences have begun to grate many fans, including talk about the regions not preparing players well enough. Ultimately, no-one but those in camp are privy to whatever metric they use to measure that, but when you lose to Italy at home in the last of five Six Nations games, and then Georgia at home in the penultimate of four autumn matches, it's a hard well to go back to with credibility.
Of course, there's another game left of the autumn and it's unlikely any action is taken before that. Wales might even put in a decent showing against Australia, through personal pride if nothing else. We've seen that happen before.
However, the reasons above mean that is likely odds against, I feel.
Whatever, I believe it matters little at this point. Wales are just bouncing from one new low to the next right now, with the odd surprising high chucked in to skew the graph. But plot a line on the chart amongst all those high and low points and you'd likely find that line trends down.
That leaves me with the unshakable feeling that Pivac, regardless of all the other burning fires currently left unattended in Welsh rugby, isn't the man to lead this team forward. Whether he actually goes is another matter entirely, of course.
There'll likely not be any morbid headers a la 'R.I.P WALES' on the top of Monday's Western Mail as there were 34 years ago. Such melodrama isn't quite the norm in Welsh rugby anymore.
Perhaps there ought to be, giving the current feeling of hopelessness in Welsh rugby.
Pivac's departure wouldn't come close to solving the myriad of issues facing the game right now, but that doesn't mean, unfortunately, it's not time for him to go
...Wales Online
.......
As the ink dried on Monday's Western Mail on December 12, 1988, the back page was headed by a simple message.
'R.I.P WALES'.
Defeat to Romania had left the national paper questioning where exactly Welsh rugby went from there. Two of Welsh rugby's favourites sons, both sadly lost in 2022, offered their own verdict on a dismal day for Wales.
"We're playing a style of rugby which is five years out of date," exclaimed Eddie Butler.
"The last 25 minutes were the worst in Welsh history," added Phil Bennett. "I've never seen such an inept display by Wales at Cardiff."
Inside the paper ran the following words: "The whole of Welsh rugby should hang its head in shame after what happened against Romania at the Arms Park.
"The players and selectors may be the easiest and most popular targets for the brickbats, but everyone connected with the game in Wales, the archaic WRU, their member clubs and the so-called fans, should share the humiliation of last weekend.
"Like a rudderless ship, rugby has run aground in Wales and there is no one who appears capable of refloating it at present. In nine alarming months Welsh fortunes have plummeted to an all time low."
The more things change, the more they stay the same. As Wayne Pivac's Wales sunk to their worst defeat in the professional era with a insipid loss to Georgia, the mind couldn't help but be drawn to past humiliations.
Romania, Canada, Western Samoa and, perhaps the only one that gets close to Georgia since the game went professional, Fiji in Nantes. All days we'd rather forget.
Losing to Georgia in Cardiff, months after falling to Italy in the capital for the first time, might just be worse than any of them. Those two defeats, uncharted territory even in the up and down world of Welsh rugby, so close together can't help but leave you numb.
All of the above from 1988 couldn't be more pertinent. Wales' style of play against Georgia looked dated and predictable, as it often has in the past three years, while they finished the game with such a lack of impetus and fight that a Georgian victory began to feel like a formality at a certain point past the hour-mark.
More so, it's hard to see where the game really goes next in Wales. Welsh rugby can have form for being a little too reactionary, but it's hardly overkill to express grave concern over the direction rugby is heading in here.
Only a matter of weeks ago, the member clubs blocked another attempt to modernise and reform Welsh Rugby Union governance with the option to appoint an independent chair. That follows the loss of key figures like Amanda Blanc and Andrew Williams from the Welsh game, who brought years of high-level business experience.
Add in the fact that the four professional sides and the WRU have been at loggerheads for the best part of a year, continuing to hinder the on-field performances and off-field interest, and it's not a pretty picture wherever you look.
Thirty-four years on from Jonathan Davies raising his concerns before heading north, Welsh rugby is still archaic. That much is clear.
Getting rid of Pivac and his coaching ticket wouldn't begin to solve those problems - there is unfortunately no single golden bullet - but those things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive as some seem to think. The performance alone on Saturday suggests to me that there is no real way of coming back from this for Pivac.
This wasn't the performance of a side chomping at the bit to leave everything out there for their coach, with Sam Warburton questioning if there's some sort of "deeper, underlying issues" there. To borrow an overused footballing parlance, did it look like the dressing room had been lost?
Wales scored the last of their points in the 24th minute and then proceeded to let Georgia grow in confidence. It's questionable whether the Georgians believed they had a chance after Jac Morgan's second try, but they certainly believed as Wales continued to not fire any shots throughout the match.
They looked like a group of players not really trusting their instincts, unaware of their DNA. When they got dragged into a dogfight, they didn't seem to know the way out.
Ultimately, there wasn't one. As Bryan Habana said, "No-one knew what to do".
Wales' attacking intentions remain hard to pinpoint. Their best performances have often come from a pragmatic style of play, while the more complex and free-flowing patterns Pivac has tried to push have been based on too many important variables - such as winning collisions and breakdowns with minimal bodies committed - to trouble Test defences.
The end result is a mess of predictable overplaying in the middle third of the pitch.
Defensively, Wales are capable of fronting up when certain teams - such as Argentina and South Africa - come at them with one-up runners and sheer physicality, but they're more vulnerable to footwork in the tight and ball movement, as shown by New Zealand's demolition job at the start of the autumn.
Ten months out from the World Cup, the trajectory seems fairly clear. Objectively good performances from Pivac's Wales have been few and far between, with the best two perhaps being defeats in France and South Africa.
One typified an attacking style rarely seen working before or since, the other a gritty show of pragmatism that should be the baseline performance for Wales, rather than a novelty once or twice a campaign.
The snippets in press conferences have begun to grate many fans, including talk about the regions not preparing players well enough. Ultimately, no-one but those in camp are privy to whatever metric they use to measure that, but when you lose to Italy at home in the last of five Six Nations games, and then Georgia at home in the penultimate of four autumn matches, it's a hard well to go back to with credibility.
Of course, there's another game left of the autumn and it's unlikely any action is taken before that. Wales might even put in a decent showing against Australia, through personal pride if nothing else. We've seen that happen before.
However, the reasons above mean that is likely odds against, I feel.
Whatever, I believe it matters little at this point. Wales are just bouncing from one new low to the next right now, with the odd surprising high chucked in to skew the graph. But plot a line on the chart amongst all those high and low points and you'd likely find that line trends down.
That leaves me with the unshakable feeling that Pivac, regardless of all the other burning fires currently left unattended in Welsh rugby, isn't the man to lead this team forward. Whether he actually goes is another matter entirely, of course.
There'll likely not be any morbid headers a la 'R.I.P WALES' on the top of Monday's Western Mail as there were 34 years ago. Such melodrama isn't quite the norm in Welsh rugby anymore.
Perhaps there ought to be, giving the current feeling of hopelessness in Welsh rugby.
Pivac's departure wouldn't come close to solving the myriad of issues facing the game right now, but that doesn't mean, unfortunately, it's not time for him to go
61-69, M
