I like Squidge and enjoy his content. But he is overly verbose which can be very annoying. Like, his Post-Pivac video ( which is my favourite of his) is 40 minutes long. What does it say?
Pivac tried to replicate his Scarlets plan practically one to one.
This plan involves:
- Attacks primarily being built from rucks within the tramlines
- During attacking set-up, 6+ Forwards need to be on their feet and distributed in wide positions across the field
- No more than 2, preferably 1 player should be securing the ball at each ruck, preferably an outside back
- The Blindside Winger as the stock "distributing" player so the 10 is given time and space to control the flow of the game
- Retain possession of as much ball as possible i.e. minimise tactical kicking
The plan failed because (3) is exploitable by the increased quality of player at the international level and the best players available to Pivac in the back three don't have the strengths that allow (4) to be an option. But rather than adapt the gameplan on an ongoing basis by doing away with (5), which suits the likes of LRZ, North, Halfpenny, Williams etc. a lot more, he doubled down, forcing either (a) wingers ill suited for playmaking to act as distributors or (b) the fly half to act as both primary and secondary distributor minimising his effectiveness at structural organisation.
If that was something that our pundits and analysts were interested in saying to us, I'd hope they could get that across in 8 or 9 minutes.
Similarly, he spent... I dunno 15 or 16 minutes talking about what made Huwipulotu tick in one of his videos. But it's as simple as saying: "For a number of years Scotlands best center pair was probably Johnson & Harris, whom are solid if unspectacular offensively. But Jones is an elite strike runner and always provides a threat must be respected, and while not necessarily as strong at every possible option, Tuipulotu provides a genuine threat in every part of the short game (crash ball, offload, short pass, grubber kick) that demands attention: this either provides opportunity for scores and breaks from them directly, or space for Russell to bring the back 3 into the game. "