Hot on the heels of their defeat by Exeter Chiefs at Sandy Park, the Scarlets headed ‘north’ to Colwyn Bay, where more than 2,000 fans turned out to see them go down by three tries to two against a Bath side parading Wales No 8 Taulupe Faletau for the first time.
Bath triumphed 32-17 in the end, but the bonus for Pivac was seeing Welsh internationals Scott Williams, Liam Williams and Emyr Phillips back in action for the Scarlets having made only 19 appearances between them last season.
“It was a big improvement on last week, as we’d expect, but there are still some areas that we need to work on. Having said that I thought we had a lot of possession in the first half and we played a lot of good footy,” said Pivac.
“It was certainly a step in the right direction and I thought we were very competitive in the first half. It was great to have players like Scott and Liam back and I thought they added a lot when they were on the field.
“We have a lot of work to do during the week on the areas that were exposed by Bath and then we’ll test those out in a live training scenario ahead of our opening game against Munster. It was very, very pleasing to see such a good crowd turn up to watch two very strong sides – the facilities at Parc Eirias are fantastic.”
New recruit Rhys Patchell helped himself to 12 of the points with a try, two conversions and a penalty and lock David Bulbring grabbed the other try. Bath had tries from Jeff Williams, Matt Banahan and Kane Palma-Newport to go with three conversions and penalty from George Ford and a penalty from Rhys Priestland.
