I think the club have been fairly open about the fact that they decided our overall direction wasn't sustainable a couple of seasons ago and decided to press the reset button. That meant letting go of some of the superstars we had, and also anyone who wasn't buying into the new ethos. I think some players managed to be both brilliant footballers, but also toxic to the club culture. Those senior players who bought into the new way of working have stayed and their loyalty is paying massive dividends now.
That allowed us to bring a whole raft of youngsters in from the academy and start to acclimatise them to first team rugby. I think the most impressive thing is that almost all of them have taken to it like ducks to water.
It's meant we were almost guaranteed to see a drop in results, but as we can see now things are slowly but surely starting to click and the new style squad is starting to play the way the old squad did a few years ago. It's early days of course, but the fact that we can pretty much cover 1-10 from the youngest squad members, and a few in the back line as well shows how well this is working. To be able to add in players like Chesty, Brooks, Launch, Brad, Smashley and more into that mix shows we've got a hell of a squad that is only going to get better.
Our scrum is right up their with the best, our loose forwards are the best by far, our lineout seems to have switched from a liability to a position of real strength, and our back line is starting to really click. Even our defence is looking better than it has in years.
So in short, I'm excited too. I think Derek, the rest of the board, Dai, the senior coaches, and the Academy coaches have done an amazing job, and if what it takes is a couple of years out of the top level european competition to make it happen I'm ok with that.
Topic: Excited (Read 1977 times)
Always a Wasp