Pivac may have to drop Biggar to get style he wants

THE big change for Wales is adjusting to Wayne Pivac and the new coaching set-up of Stephen Jones, Jonathan Humphreys, and Byron Hayward after 12 years of a very experienced, established set-up under Warren Gatland, Shaun Edwards and Robin McBryde.

- JEREMY GUSCOTT

Pivac now faces the sort of headlines no coach wants after taking over as Wales coach and finishing in fifth place in the 2020 Six Nations after last weekend’s 14-10 home loss to Scotland, only a season after they were crowned Grand Slam champions for the last time under Gatland.

There is an adjustment you go through with any new coach coming in, and if you lose 300 caps of experience it takes a while for a team to adapt. Also, even though Pivac has coached Auckland, Fiji, North Harbour and the Scarlets, if you compare the international experience of his group of coaches with that of Gatland’s, there is a big gap.

There has been masses of change in the coaching and management of the Wales squad within the space of 18 months, and that means that Pivac has to rely heavily on the experience of players like Alun Wyn Jones, Ken Owens, Taulupe Faletau, Justin Tipuric, Jonathan Davies and George North to give the players a steer in the right direction.

Pivac is up and running in one sense because he and attack coach Stephen Jones know the Scarlets players very well – but as head coach he has to decide whether he wants to play the Scarlets way, or whether he needs to change and create a new style to suit all the Welsh players.

You usually associate a style with the coach rather than the players, which is evident when you look back on the Gatland era. I thought the ‘Warrenball’ stuff was disrespectful, because Gatland is a coach who sees the best players available to him, and then selects the best style of play to get the best out of them.