Scott Gibbs calls for Wales to leave Alun Wyn Jones out of squad for South Africa Test series

Scott Gibbs has urged Wayne Pivac to use the Tests against South Africa this summer to draft in fresh faces and see what a Wales rebuild looks like.

The British and Irish Lions' kingpin from the 1997 series in the republic would also like Springboks coaches Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber to operate from a similar playbook. Both sets of coaches still rely significantly on many of the players who featured at the 2019 in Japan.

But Gibbs said: “If I were Pivac or Rassie or Jacques at the moment, I’d be saying: ‘Listen, maybe we need to start thinking what a rebuild looks like because we can’t carry on the legacy from Japan four years hence. There’s clearly an array of talent that we need to blood and how do we do that? Let’s free up some spaces.’”

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For Wales, Gibbs argues, it might be better if the likes of Alun Wyn Jones, George North and Justin Tipuric sat out the summer, with all three having battled injuries over the past 12 months. Speaking via a video published on the SARUGBY MAG website, he said: “If you look at Alun Wyn, George North, Tipuric — all of them have had a difficult year with injuries and so on.

"Maybe it’s time to just say: ‘Listen, take the off season and rest. Let’s free up some space to see what talent we have coming forward.’

“I think that would make for an even more interesting Test series. Both sides [would] have new faces and new identities and maybe you can blood some new rugby patterns that’ll be a little bit more exciting, rather than maybe going up against a robust selection that will be familiar to South Africa, and with Wales then trying to bring all of their injured guys who haven’t had much