{"id":39652,"date":"2025-08-02T09:25:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T09:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/39652\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T09:25:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T09:25:12","slug":"wayne-pivac-reacts-to-louis-rees-zammits-return-to-rugby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/39652\/","title":{"rendered":"Wayne Pivac reacts to Louis Rees-Zammit’s return to rugby"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

562 days after announcing his departure from rugby, Louis Rees-Zammit<\/a> is parting ways with the NFL\u2019s Jacksonville Jaguars in favour of what he hopes will be a return to the international rugby arena.<\/p>\n

Bursting onto the scene as a teenager with freakish athleticism, Rees-Zammit was fast-tracked to the Welsh national team by then-head coach Wayne Pivac, who claims the \u201cif you\u2019re good enough, you\u2019re old enough\u201d selection policy.<\/p>\n

The coach oversaw the first two years of Rees-Zammit\u2019s international career, including 2021\u2019s breakout Six Nations<\/a> campaign. The speedster\u2019s game-breaking exploits on the right wing played a big role in Wales<\/a> taking home the title.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to today, and Pivac is back involved in the community game in Auckland, having spent two years in Japan<\/a> Rugby League One with the NEC Green Rockets. Just hours after Rees-Zammit\u2019s return announcement, the coach happened to be interviewed on the Kiwi radio station Sport Nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, he\u2019s certainly a player who brings the crowd in, and it\u2019s usually females, to be honest,\u201d Pivac joked when asked how big of a win for rugby\u00a0Zammit\u2019s return is.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether it was for mums or grandmothers, he certainly had a huge following as a youngster; we got hold of him at 19, I think he played Test rugby at 19 or 20. But that guy is the quickest guy that I\u2019ve coached, quicker than any of the Fijian boys. He is absolutely rapid.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith someone like that, you can\u2019t coach natural speed. So, he\u2019ll be a great asset to get back in. It will be interesting to see if he goes straight back into the Welsh team and makes himself available.\u201d<\/p>\n

A club contract is expected to be signed in the coming weeks as the European season nears, and there are plenty of bidders vying for the 24-year-old\u2019s signature.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, during his absence, Welsh rugby\u2019s struggles did anything but dissipate, with just one win, coming against Japan in the recent July Test window, to show for their efforts since the 2023 Rugby World Cup.<\/p>\n

With the poor results, crowd numbers have been declining at both club and international levels.<\/p>\n

Pivac saw firsthand the troubles within the game, and while he hopes Rees-Zammit can inject some life into the scene, he was blunt with his diagnosis of the broader issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, I was there nine years, and not a lot changed in those nine years. We\u2019re having the same conversations, it\u2019s just that I was speaking from the Welsh point of view, rather than the regional point of view.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the issues around the funding, the development of the game, the lower level, they just haven\u2019t moved on. Whereas other countries have.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve still got the old clubs that don\u2019t want to amalgamate. There are the regions, where they\u2019re positioned. A lot of young talent is going across the border. They\u2019re eligible for Wales and England; they\u2019re making themselves available for England.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd just the money in the game is drying up. It\u2019s not what it used to be, so it\u2019s pretty tough.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know the contracts we were playing players, and in some cases, they\u2019ve dropped a huge amount. Guys who were on hundreds of thousands of pounds are now on less than one hundred thousand playing club rugby.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, it\u2019s a sad state of affairs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"562 days after announcing his departure from rugby, Louis Rees-Zammit is parting ways with the NFL\u2019s Jacksonville Jaguars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-39652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}