By Richard Reynolds
Wayne Pivac has admitted Wales will lose to Scotland next week unless they improve on their sloppy display in Paris.
The Wales head coach had a simple message after his side’s 38-21 defeat to France that has raised the prospect of a fifth successive defeat next weekend when his side resume their Six Nations campaign.
Wales lost against Ireland, France and England in the tournament earlier this year and ahead of their final game, Pivac conceded: “We have to be a lot better next week.”
The final act of the 2020 Guinness Six Nations will see Scotland come to Parc Y Scarlets for a battle for fourth place in the championship table. Gregor Townsend’s men warmed-up with an eight try, 48-7 win over Georgia at Murrayfield on Friday night.
The Scots currently occupy fourth place with 10 points. Wales are fifth with seven and will be hoping to avoid a fifth successive defeat on Saturday.
“I think you could see we were a bit rusty in Paris. We’ve come out of lockdown and there hasn’t been a lot of big rugby played,” said Pivac.
“There were similar comments from the players afterwards. It was a big step up from what they’ve had in the last couple of months.
“They’ve not had a lot of rugby and the level is obviously a lot higher, as you saw out there. They’ll be better for it but we will review this performance and look at the areas that we need to work on during the week.
“We need to come out with less mistakes. I think we left a couple of tries out there so we need to be a little bit more clinical with those scoring opportunities.
“Scotland were certainly very good against Georgia. Hopefully, we’ll put a lot more pressure on them than Georgia did, but we’ll be looking at our own game.
“We’ll be making sure we improve across the board. Scotland will be a very tough opponent and we’ll have to play a lot better than we did against France to get a result.”
Scotland warmed up for next weekend’s Six Nations finale in Wales with an eight-try victory over Georgia: https://t.co/Wl2C2ykTeO pic.twitter.com/Kbr3v76CtB
— Sky Sports Rugby Union (@SkySportsRugby) October 23, 2020
One of the areas the head coach earmarked for improvement was in the aerial battles and holding onto possession. That, once again, was probably down to a lack of games.
“There were a lot of aerial battles and we weren’t good enough in the air on the night. We gave too much ball back to the French in open play,” admitted Pivac.
“There were also three turnovers at critical times for us. I think there were 12 in total, so it’s something we’ll go away and look at.
“We’ll make sure we hold on to possession next week. We have to be a lot better next week.
“I thought the French team played very well and thoroughly deserved the result. They capitalised on a lot of our errors, which was disappointing from our end.
“They certainly got a lot of ball away in the tackle and they punished us in that area a lot. I thought we started well in both halves, but there were too many errors from our side.”