Second-half ill-discipline cost Wales, says Pivac

Wales squandered a 34-13 lead in the second half as yellow cards to captain Justin Tipuric and Ryan Elias turned the game on its head after the Wallabies had earlier seen Jake Gordon and Tom Robertson sent to the bin 

Pivac ends the autumn with one win from their four matches as the Australia defeat follows losses to Georgia and New Zealand. 

“I think we got everything we wanted at the start of the game, and we didn’t quite finish them off after half-time,” the 60-year-old said. 

“I thought our option at the scrum probably wasn’t the best in terms of going to the left. We needed to cross the line and we scored shortly after half-time. 

💪 Like a Jac hammer through the Aussie defence 🙌 @WelshRugbyUnion #AutumnNationsSeries #WALvAUS pic.twitter.com/wstt7sK3Ky

— Autumn Nations Series (@autumnnations) November 26, 2022

“I thought we built nicely and got into a situation where we should have won the game.  

“Clearly, we took advantage of their ill-discipline and when the roles reversed, they did the same to us and we couldn’t hold them out at the end.” 

Jac Morgan led Wales’ scoring efforts, crossing for the opener inside eight minutes before Taulupe Faletau scored in his 100th Test. 

Folau Fainga’a got Australia’s first try to see his side go into the break 20-13 down before Morgan’s second and a try for Rio Dyer stretched Wales to a lead of 21. 

Those were Wales’ final points of the game as Mark Nawaqanitawase scored twice before Elias conceded a penalty try for collapsing the maul.

😎 Nawaqanitawase doing the double#AutumnNationsSeries #WALvAUS @wallabies pic.twitter.com/3M0HG3SQ23

— Autumn Nations Series (@autumnnations) November 26, 2022

Lachlan Lonergan scooped up a loose ball to race into the corner and hand Australia an improbable victory. 

Despite the frustrating manner of the defeat, Pivac believes his side improved on their 13-12 loss to Georgia last week. 

He added: “We can’t fault the effort that the boys put in, we talked after last week that we wanted more physicality. 

“We wanted to go out there and express ourselves and I thought for large parts they did that but we weren’t able to bring it home. 

“I thought the boys played large parts of the game exactly how we wanted them to and when you get down to 13-14 players, it is hard to keep the opposition out and that is what cost us in the end. 

“We review every competition this is no different so we will do that. We have to take the positives out of the competition and review the things that didn’t go well and work out why they didn’t go well.”