Shane Williams: Scarlets are in need of grunt to go with the gas
For the first time in their history, the Scarlets have lost their opening three games of a league campaign. What a difference to last season.
Then they made a great start to the campaign before fading badly at the business end of the season when they ran out of steam – and players. But there has been no excuse for losing their first three games of the season.
There was some improvement on Friday night against Ulster but if the Scarlets are not careful, they could be out of contention by Christmas. Ospreys made a terrible start last season and were chasing their tail for the rest of the campaign and never really caught up.
The problems for Wayne Pivac have started with the pack. There is a lack of ball-carriers, the set-piece has struggled and they have been indisciplined.
We were all looking forward to seeing Jonathan Davies back in red and the return to fitness of Scott Williams and Liam Williams. But what’s the point having a back-line bristling with talent – close to the Wales back division – if you can’t things right up front?
There’s a reason we hear coaches talk about ‘earning the right’ to go wide and we saw why against Munster in their opening game.
Disappointingly Scarlets were far too lateral, flinging the ball wide at the first chance before going forward. Without anyone to take the ball up the middle, it makes life so easy for defences to spread out and usher Scarlets safely into touch. It’s schoolboy rugby.
Scarlets are clearly trying to get their match-winners involved as much as possible, but you have to be smarter than that.
Everyone knows you have to move defences around the field, commit defences and create mis-matches. But right now, teams are finding it easy to defend against Scarlets. For all their hard work, they are going nowhere and wearing themselves out.
They need to find some ball-carriers soon. Ken Owens has great attributes in that department but right now it must feel he is fighting a solo battle. There are seven other forwards who need to step up and big guys like Jake Ball need to start providing more options.
That’s why they are really missing Rob Evans because they can’t rely upon Jonathan Davies or Liam Williams to create something from nothing.
There’s hope that Samson Lee could be back soon and that will be a blessing for the set-piece that has also struggled.
Stephen Jones, Pivac’s assistant and back coach, will be disappointed that game-management was also an issue against Edinburgh.
Instead of kicking to touch on the stroke of half-time and going into the break to regather, they were turned over, Edinburgh scored a try. There’s no worse time to concede a try and instead of trailing by seven, Scarlets were down by 14.
This has the obvious result of putting pressure on Pivac’s position.
When you look at the calibre of the team, the fact they have made summer singings and have had time to prepare a game-plan that suits, Scarlets fans will not be impressed.
They were grumbling after losing the first game at home, but after three defeats, the moaning is going to become a roar.
