Why isn't Louis Rees-Zammit playing for Wales against England in Six Nations?

WALES make the trip to England looking for their first win at Twickenham since the 2015 World Cup.

But they will be without winger Louis Rees-Zammit.

The speed king was one of the star men in last year's Six Nations but will play no part against the Red Rose.

Why isn't Louis Rees-Zammit playing for Wales against England?

Louis Rees-Zammit has had injury concerns recently, as he picked up a knock to his ankle in Ireland.

But they are not the reason he is not playing at Twickenham.

Rees-Zammit has been released from the Wales squad and sent back to his club Gloucester.

Rees-Zammit has not hit the heights of last season, where he was one of Wales' biggest threats.

And Wayne Pivac offered veiled criticism of the winger's work rate out of possession as he explained his reasons for dropping him.

Pivac said: "For us, with this particular match, looking at the opposition and the way we think the game will be played, I think the experience of the other two [Alex Cuthbert and Josh Adams], work-rate off the ball and those sorts of things, are really going to come into play.

"It's a tough call on Louis but one that we think is the right call. He's no different to any other player. He's disappointed, obviously.

"He'll be frustrated but I think if you look back to the first Six Nations, he didn't get any game time, he went away, listened to what the coaches had passed on, worked hard and then had a very successful Six Nations last year."

Pivac added that he would "definitely" prefer it if Rees-Zammit was playing for a Welsh club rather than Gloucester.

Rees-Zammit had already expressed his frustration with former Wales head coach Warren Gatland after failing to perform on the Lions Tour.

He told the Guardian in November: “I don’t want to be the b***h but I just thought we had the wrong gameplan, to be honest.

"If we’d played a bit of rugby I think we could have given them a better test but we ended up falling into their gameplan and that cost us the series.

“I obviously wasn’t suited to the gameplan they went with. If we’d played more attacking rugby I’d like to think I’d have been in with a chance but they wanted physicality.

“It was ‘who can kick more?’ That’s the last thing I wanted. I wanted ball in space, which was exactly what Finn Russell wanted as well.

“I personally think we could have played any gameplan.

"We had wingers with pace, we had wingers with physicality, we had centres with pace and we had a range of 10s who could have done anything.

“That was probably the worst bit. Everyone thought we could have done a bit more in terms of playing."

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