We had exactly the same problem under Dai. Young guys will do best if they are put into a team with experienced players that are playing well. But we are currently shite, which makes it so much harder to do. You have to question the value for the team, squad and club as a whole of us taking risks and continuing to lose/appearing that we've given up.
Between a rock and a hard place for sure. Personally I'd play Charlie as I think he's better than Umaga. I'd play T Willis as we've missed his energy and enthusiasm. I'd look to make get Curran involved too. But first and foremost we just have to win a game.
I completely agree that younger players flourish when they are alongside their more experienced Peers. Almost every Prem club seems to have a cohesive plan for introducing their Academy prospects to senior matchday squads and starting line-ups with the apparent exception of ours and those Clubs that do are reaping the benefits of this managed, more pragmatic approach.
We, on the other hand, seem to adopt a rather arbitrary ‘sink or swim’ approach where we parachute youngsters in as a last resort when all attempts to persevere with established regulars over multiple matches have failed. This results in brief runs where certain young prospects appear for a few matches then vanish into obscurity when the poor performance of their more established Peers has been forgotten / forgiven – Cardall and to a lesser degree Atkinson are cases in point where, through no apparent performance reasons, they are replaced by the legacy players they previously replaced. In a winning team this may be justified but in a team that’s struggling to win it is less justifiable and in a season where there is no danger of relegation even less so! We have already seen the impact of this ‘sink or swim’ approach on the psyche of our young players where the impact on their confidence and self-esteem is impacted and takes them months to recover from – Umaga? We should be taking advantage of the ‘security’ we have within the Prem at the moment to adopt a more cohesive approach to the insertion of our youngsters into Prem matchday set-ups that looks balancing current performances with our future success.
Owing to Covid our Academy and less played Seniors have had very little opportunity to show what they can do but when they are given the opportunity to show what they can do such as last Sunday’s match against London Irish A’s (who featured Waisake Naholo) what message does it send the likes of Callum Sirker who has not played in a Wasps shirt for 18 months with his last outing prior to his injury being when he scored against the EAs in the Cup competition only to make his comeback in a Wasps shirt last Sunday and score a hattrick? Sirker has an average of nearly 3 tries per game for the Club and still can’t appear to get a look in? It’s not as if our established wingers have shown any sign of being able to create opportunities themselves so why are we not giving him minutes to see if he can do what he’s done in every previous outing and settings in a Wasps premiership starting line-up?
I have actually seen the matchday footage from Sunday that was sent by a friend of mine that has a Son that plays in the London Irish Academy and Sirker actually looks bigger and faster than he did prior to his ACL injury which, to those of you that have seen him play in the ‘A’ league, might seem incredible as he was lightning fast back then. His 3 tries were also excellent with two of them being solo efforts from 50 metres out respectively and the 3rd try being a relatively simple run-in also from around 50 metres out. Curran was also excellent from what I saw.
I will try and figure out a way of sharing some of the London Irish A footage with you all so you can judge for yourselves.
Always a Wasp
