‘It’s justifiable to sack Wayne Pivac’

Welsh great Jonathan Davies has added to the heat on Wayne Pivac, believing the New Zealand coach could justifiably be sacked following the Six Nations shambles.

Wales dropped from 2021 champion status to fifth in 2022 with the final match, a historic loss to wooden spooners Italy, putting Pivac in a precarious position.

The 22-21 result was the first time Wales had lost at home to Italy who broke a 36-match winless streak with this upset result.

is team were “absolutely dreadful” against Italy.

Pivac, who has lost 15 of 27 tests in charge, is under increasing scrutiny, with some huge names in the Welsh game adding to that heat.

“If you lose to Italy, it’s sackable,” Davies told BBC’s Scrum V show.

“If they want to get rid of him, they can, it’s justifiable to do it.

“The performance was absolutely dreadful. The Italians were the better team.

“Again, our attack was absolutely woeful. I’ve no idea what they’re trying to do. Dummy-runners, they don’t tip off – the only tip-off in the game was Faletau to Watkin and we scored. Forwards don’t look capable of getting over the gain line, when you can’t do that it’s difficult to do anything.”

Davies felt there was a deeper malaise hitting the proud Welsh game.

“We are papering over cracks again. It’s far deeper than that. The under-20s lost today, the regions got smashed in South Africa and I don’t think the best players are playing for Wales at the moment and there’s no one coming through. And in the summer we go to South Africa.”

Davies also hit out at Pivac’s Welsh assistant Stephen Jones, who is in charge of attack.

“Ultimately, Italy and France had the same tactic; kick the ball to Wales and let them attack us. Because they knew Wales’ attack wouldn’t break them down,” Davies told the BBC.

“So you’ve got to ask what Stephen Jones’ ideas are. We don’t counter-attack.”

He felt a lack of consistency in selection was also causing problems.

Recent Wales captain Sam Warburton was also unimpressed.

“I don’t know whether there’s like a sense of complacency like a testimonial game but, and I don’t mean to be disrespectful to the Italians, it’s not acceptable to lose at home to Italy. You just can’t, can’t do it,” Warburton told the BBC.

“I do think that there’s going to have to be some serious conversations about the infrastructure in Wales because it’s just been badly exposed over this campaign.”

But Warburton felt Pivac would likely hold on to his job for next year’s World Cup in France and also suggested there were bigger problems at play.

“I think last year [Six Nations title win] will take Wayne Pivac through to 2023. It would be easy to just look at the head coach and the players, but I think Wales have been hiding behind much deeper issues.

“We have had a generally successful national team and poor regions, but now the national team is not doing so well.”