{"id":452489,"date":"2026-03-01T20:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T20:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/452489\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T20:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T20:06:08","slug":"wayne-pivac-former-wales-head-coach-to-take-charge-of-benetton-in-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/452489\/","title":{"rendered":"Wayne Pivac: Former Wales head coach to take charge of Benetton in summer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former Wales and Scarlets head coach Wayne Pivac will take charge of United Rugby Championship (URC) side Benetton next season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 63-year-old New Zealander has signed a contract as first-team head coach with the Italian club until June 2028, with the option of a further two seasons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Pivac won the 2021 Six Nations during a three-year spell as Wales boss, but was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/63770196\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">replaced by Warren Gatland in 2022<\/a> having won 13 of 34 games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He also spent three years in charge of Fiji before leading Scarlets to the 2017 Pro12 title. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I couldn&#8217;t say no to the opportunity to coach Benetton after facing them in Treviso with the Scarlets,&#8221; said Pivac, who left Japanese second-tier side NEC Green Rockets last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I enjoyed every trip: the matches, the stadium, the people and the Italian lifestyle. The challenge of taking the team to the next level and giving continuity to the work done by previous coaches is exciting.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Benetton are 13th in the URC following their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c8jxwlynj78o\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">15-15 draw at Dragons<\/a> on 28 February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Wales and Scarlets head coach Wayne Pivac will take charge of United Rugby Championship (URC) side Benetton&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-452489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}