Former Wales captain Gwyn Jones believes head coach Wayne Pivac is “out of his depth” at Test level and has shown no progress in the hot-seat.
Jones’s comments come after Georgia claimed an historic 13-12 win over Wales in Cardiff in last weekend’s Autumn Nations Series Test.
Outside of that, Wales also lost their first Test to Italy in Cardiff earlier this year in the final round of the Six Nations.
Stagnated
Jones believes the team has stagnated under Pivac despite holding their own against the Springboks in July, including their first win on South African soil.
“You don’t see any development coming through. I think he’s out of his depth at this level and I don’t see Wales developing. He’s been in charge for three years, and we’re not a better team now than when he started,” Jones told Wales TV station S4C.
“He came to change Wales’ game, to play with a tempo and to score tries, and we’re unable to score tries against almost anyone.
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“We’ve had one good championship where we had red cards going for us. But apart from that there’s not much to write home about. We lost against Italy, which was disappointing, and we won out in South Africa, but we’re back to exactly where we were.”
Jones claims that Pivac does not know which players are his best and the team lacks an identity, two core faults in his reign as the Wales coach.
“A national coach needs to know who his best players are and how he wants to play, and those are two things he hasn’t got right. There’s no plan and I don’t see it changing,” he said.
Painful loss
The former skipper admitted the Georgia loss was painful to watch but felt a result like that was always coming for Pivac’s Wales.
“It was disappointing and unacceptably poor to lose at home to Georgia. That kind of game, that kind of defeat, has been coming if you look at the way Wales have been playing for the last year,” he added.
“We beat Scotland in a game of low quality, we lost against Italy, which was as disappointing as the [Georgia] result.
“The players looked so flat, lacking in energy, lacking in spirit. Where is the heart?
“For me, the players are good enough to beat Georgia but if they don’t know what the plan is on the field then they’re going to look like they have no direction and that’s what the biggest problem was.
“I don’t think the team knows how they are meant to try and attack, what their plan is, how they score tries.”
Pivac has one last assignment for 2022 as Wales welcomes the Wallabies to Cardiff this weekend.