Pressure on Pivac as Wales humbled

Wayne Pivac remains confident he is still the man to lead Wales to the Rugby World Cup despite overseeing their worst result of the professional era.

Yesterday's 13-12 home defeat to Georgia has led to calls for Pivac to be removed as head coach.

“You've seen a lot of results at the moment going against the formbook, and our result is one of those,” said Pivac when asked about his future.

“Where you are going with that question? You probably want to ask somebody else, but I'll be here rolling the sleeves up first thing in the morning like all the other coaches in the group.

“We are here to do a job.We are totally focused on building towards the World Cup. This is clearly a setback and we are not proud of that result. Seven days is a long time in rugby, and we will look at it all, including pulling the game to bits.

“We have to make sure we get the performance we are all happy with and proud of on seven days' time.”

Wales looked totally rudderless, especially during the second-half, and captain Justin Tipuric looked stunned after the game. When Tipuric was asked what his message would be to the public his answer summed up how low Wales have fallen under Pivac.

“It's something they're probably used to unfortunately in the last few years in Welsh rugby, up and down,” he said. “You have to give Georgia credit. It can't just be all down to us. Georgia finished the game very well. We've had some bad results, even when Gats (Warren Gatland) was here. We lost to Samoa when we were hot favourites for that game.

“It's tough to be the first Welsh team to lose to Georgia. Unfortunately, you have those tough days in your career, and now it is all about how we react. We obviously planned to finish this autumn strong and get momentum after Argentina. Unfortunately, we didn't do that today. We let ourselves down.”

Wales, who have only won once this autumn against Argentina, must now regroup before they face Australia next Saturday.

“We've got to stick together as a group, management and players,” said Wales No.8 Taulupe Faletau. “Our errors kept them in the game. We'll just look back at the game and see where we can be better next time we play them. Got to stick together as a team, we've shown we can bounce back from low points like this, so we'll look to do the same next week.”

On the flip side Georgia captain Merab Sharikadze urged World Rugby to take note as they bid to join the Six Nations in the future.

“Hopefully, the heads of rugby will have watched this game,” said Sharikadze.

“Hopefully, they will make some moves. Sometimes something is so obvious that you can't run away from it.”