Rassie just can’t keep his moronic gob shut can he. Needs to be fired
Interesting article, somehow hadn’t connected all those incidents together but the point is exactly right. Autumn internationals have shown the value of thinking clearly under pressure | England rugby union team | The Guardian
Feels like an important game today for Wales. They haven’t looked terrible to me, but don’t have anything to show for their efforts.
I remain unconvinced to be honest. I can’t comment on the Georgia game in which the performance has been slated but in the other tests I see very little in the way of a settled and ingrained way of playing. Something looks and feels off and that isn’t a good feeling.
It honestly feels like we have gone backwards post Garland and results certainly back that view.
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That is more or less why I think this is a disproportionately important match for Wales. That interpretation cannot help but take hold if they don’t produce wins. Argentina was solid but flawed, Georgia was not great (that article highlights that mental error). Wales is moving out of the stage where experimentation is just fine, and into the time of the cycle where something needs to start to gel, and that doesn’t seem to have happened yet.
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Just watched the game and I’m furious. First half was excellent (to a point), best performance in 2 years say with a clear game plan and pattern of play. But we still left at least 14 points on the pitch through inability to read a situation and be clinical.
Then that second half for some inexplicable reason, we decided to throw everything we did well in the first out the window. Patterns gone, no shape, nothing.
Not sure I can honestly blame Pivac for that but something isn’t right.
Fairly crazy time, rumours flying that Gatland will be brought in for the Six Nations. What makes it particularly crazy is that the rumour is either Wales or England want him.
Yeah, he’s definitely been making himself more visible of late.
I think he’s a great manager / coach. He gets teams playing to tactics that match the individual player levels, attributes. Sum of the parts and all that. Clearly an obvious difference to Pivac there and probably my main criticism of him.
That said I’m actually more concerned at the state of the game in Wales and it’s governance at the moment. I don’t know what the answer is and I’m not hearing anyone with suggestions either. Plenty saying it’s broken though, which it is.
The sport is in a pretty sad state in many places. England is clearly a mess, given what we are seeing at the top level. Canada is going nowhere fast, didn’t qualify for the upcoming World Cup, and I don’t have much confidence in the next.
You’re right, it is.
Covid clearly part of that but also a massive issue at club / region level. International level seems to be ruling the roost and the money generated there is not filtering down or that momentum used to create interest lower down.
It’s weird because I see good things happening but it isn’t enough. My local club has u8’s, u10’s and u16’s and they are well attended and there’s a decent coaching set up etc. Even the first team, a club I captained, has a far better set up. None of that existed when I was playing and yet the game is still in as much of a mess as it was back then. Stupid stuff like the first team has a ceiling beyond which they can’t be promoted and the development route for players is messy.
Wales made a bit of a deal with the devil with that ‘provincial’ structure to support the Pro14/URC teams. That structure has (sort of) allowed the top level teams to compete, but I am not sure it has a healthy effect on the tiers that feed upward.
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Indeed, and as far as the Welsh regions, clubs and WRU are concerned it’s open warfare.
Regions don’t have enough money but what they do have, they spend poorly. The regional structure isn’t developing as it should, but it is also damaging the clubs below. The league structure is probably a mess, but when hasn’t it been? And the financing model is probably like a post Armageddon landscape. Again nothing new there.
And that’s probably the tip of the iceberg. Drill down in any one area and it’s probably rotten to the core.
And yet, I see more youth structure and development than there ever has been. Certainly in the north anyway.
It’s weird.
For someone who grew up where I did, the destination for a good player who wants to play at the top level is clear - Llanelli Scarlets. The problem is the path isn’t particularly clear for how to get there. Maybe it’s less of an issue with the greater population density region of the Valleys and into South Glam, but in West Wales it definitely feels like promising player bounce around trying to find ways to play on teams of a profile high enough to get noticed in a way that isnt productive and they end up getting lost in the system.
It is sort of surprising to me that that is a significant problem, given the distances. Where I am, trials for the provincial teams are usually ~500km away. The logistics of scouting such dense rugby country would seem to be easy.
I think the point is there isn’t much scouting, and lots of vested interests in where a player should play at any stage of his development. In a well organized system where everything was focused on developing players for Wales, there’d be more of a centralized and coherent pathway to determine which clubs a player should be playing at depending on their potential and stage of development. We don’t have that though.
Same for us in the north. It’s Scarlets, probably via RGC but below that it’s a crap shoot.
It feels like you’re reliant on getting noticed by RGC who probably only have 30 places on the squad. There’s no alternative to RGC and I think I’m right in saying most clubs have no route to getting to that level either. So I don’t think players move around that much.
Pivac gone, Gatland returns.
Fucking comedy
I wonder how that will work without Edwards.
Good question. I’ve got a lot of respect for Gatland as a coach (reasons above) but how all this fits and works is another matter entirely.
It also does nothing for the wider game issues unless that’s in Garlands brief, which I doubt.
I can’t see the WRU handing the future of the game in Wales to the national coach again.
Reports that Jones is gone too.