Having warmed-up in Paris against the French, Pivac’s men rounded off their 2020 Guinness Six Nations campaign against the Scots at Parc Y Scarlets last weekend. The Llanelli venue will be their home from home throughout the Nations Cup, with fixtures against Georgia and England building up to a final play-off game in December.
So what is the Autumn Nations Cup? Six Nations Rugby, together with its constituent unions and federations, devised the competition to take place over four weekends between 13 November and 6 December to take the place of the traditional fixtures against southern hemisphere sides that were postponed due to the global pandemic.
The Autumn Nations Cup 2020 will be a unique eight-team tournament, involving the Six Nations, Georgia and Fiji. The eight teams have been split into two groups:
Group A: England, Ireland, Wales, Georgia
Group B: France, Scotland, Italy, Fiji.
It all kicks-off on the weekend of 13-15 November, with Wales launching the competition with their trip to the Aviva Stadium in Dublin where they will face Ireland on Friday, 13 November.
The next day England will host Georgia and Italy will welcome Scotland. On Sunday, 15 November, France will entertain Fiji.
The final weekend will be on 5-6 December when a special round of matches, based on the group standings, will see each team face off against the team ranked in their same position in the opposite group:
1st Group A v 1st Group B
2nd Group A v 2nd Group B
3rd Group A v 3rd Group B
4th Group A v 4th Group B
After five defeats in a row the Welsh side will be looking to get back to winning ways and righting a few recent wrongs in their game. That is something that Cardiff Blues wing Josh Adams is certainly looking forward to doing in the Autumn Nations Cup.
“Every player will have a patch in their career where they don’t pick up a few wins. Now it’s all about how we come together as a team,” said Adams.
“We’re working extremely hard in the week to do that. We are putting in some mileage to put ourselves in the best place to perform.
“The result against the Scots wasn’t what we wanted, but that doesn’t mean we’ll dwell on it. It’s a line in the sand now. “We’ve got a totally new competition in the Autumn Nations Cup coming up, so we have to get our minds right, bodies right and put our best foot forward in Dublin.
“It’s difficult to put your finger on what’s going wrong at the minute. We had a look at the breakdown after France and we felt we were probably a little bit soft in that area.
“We got on the wrong side of the referee Andrew Brace on a few occasions against the Scots. We have to learn to adapt to the referee as the game goes on.”
The top try scorer at the World Cup in Japan this time last year, Adams has been one of the star players for Wales since breaking into the team. Last year he was a Grand Slammer, but this year he knows he has to react to the current slump in fortunes.
“It’s about how you react when your backs are against the wall. A few things and results have gone against us, but I believe we stepped up a bit against Scotland from the game in France,” he added.
“Now we’ve got two weeks to get ready for Ireland and we’ll be sure we put ourselves in the best possible place for the Aviva Stadium. It’s the beginning of a new competition for everyone.
“We’ve put pressure on ourselves from the results we’ve had recently. Everyone expects us to win and that’s great because we want to win every single game.
“That’s going to be the key focus for us moving forward – to do everything in our control to come out the right side of the result. We can understand the frustration the fans must feel. I was a supporter once and I know exactly how they feel. It is difficult because we never want to lose, especially at home.
“I can only say ‘stick with us’ and ‘thank you’ – we’re very grateful for your support at home. We’re doing our best and I’d like to think every single one of us represents our country with pride.
“We put our bodies on the line because we are all proud Welshmen. I’ve no doubt we’ll continue to work hard, pull together, no matter what the results.
“We’re so privileged to play the game at the minute, with everything that is going on. A lot has changed, of course it has, and it’s important we come together as best we can.
“Don’t get me wrong, our performances need to improve and we need to get results. The Six Nations this year was Wayne Pivac’s first tournament and he was implementing his philosophies.
“It has been the same for Byron Hayward in defence and Stephen Jones in attack. I’m sure everyone could all see the way we were going about it in the Six Nations and I thought we did it fairly well at times.
“I thought we were pretty good, but the break hasn’t helped. I can’t use that as an excuse as we’re all professional rugby players and should be picking things up quickly, but at times we struggled to get some continuity or to string some phases together.”
WALES AUTUMN NATIONS CUP FIXTURES
Friday, 13 November Ireland v Wales – Aviva Stadium (kick-off 7.00pm) TV: Channel 4 / Amazon Prime Video / S4C
Saturday, 21 November Wales v Georgia – Parc y Scarlets (kick-off 5.15pm) TV: Amazon Prime Video / S4C
Saturday, 28 November Wales v England – Parc y Scarlets (kick-off 4.00pm) TV: Amazon Prime Video / S4C
Saturday, 5 December Wales v TBC – Parc y Scarlets (kick-off 4.45pm) TV: Amazon Prime Video / S4C
HOW TO WATCH WALES IN THE AUTUMN NATIONS CUP
Amazon’s Autumn Nations Cup coverage will be available to watch with the Prime Video app on TVs, mobile devices, games consoles, set-top-boxes, Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, Fire tablets or online. The games will also be available live on the Welsh language, free-to-air channel, S4C.
S4C is available on: Sky 104, Freeview 4, Virgin TV 166 and Freesat 104 in Wales Sky 134, Freesat 120 and Virgin TV 166 in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland S4C HD is available for Sky and Freesat viewers in Wales and across the UK. Live online and on demand on s4c.cymru and by using the S4C Clic app for iOS and Google Play. Viewers across the UK can also watch S4C on BBC iPlayer, tvcatchup.com, tvplayer.com and YouView.
