Yesterday, the squad, and the future

[Jac A]

Two apologies, firstly for the thread title, I’ve had a few things on my mind I thought I’d say and rather than put them on different threads I thought I'd consolidate it and secondly for the length (again).

Firstly, yesterday. Great result. I’m glad that the responses here have been so positive (even though I’m more of a lurker, the DW site has been a bit of a downer recently with some people seemingly expecting the whole academy to walk out because Dai has selected our International class players). I think that almost the whole team put in a good performance, the pack worked hard, set piece was solid/good, backrow outplayed theirs by some margin, Simpson was quick with delivery, backline looked decent, Watson sharp and came looking for work more than he has before, le Roux was good - got hands on the ball lots (25+ times). Yes, we missed nearly 30 tackles (so did they) and they made a few clean breaks (so did we), but despite their very good backline, their only try came from a driving maul.

Rest of the season? I know that ECC would be best for the club financially etc but as people have mentioned on the ring-fencing thread, I think from a rugby perspective we’d be better of in the Challenge Cup. It’s a world cup year so the Prem Cup (or whatever) is all pre-Prem season, there will be no real rest weekends etc so allowing youngsters the chance on a European stage while resting ‘star’ players would, I think be beneficial. So I’m not going to be too bothered by results now, I’ll just try to enjoy the games whatever happens will be fine with me. I would like to see some younger players get some game time in the next few matches, but I’m not going to get too worked up about it.

I was also looking at the team selection and noting Dai’s comments about finally having the right kind of selection headaches and I though. How injury ravaged have we been this year? So I looked and some numbers. You may quibble a couple of selections but I think that below is roughly what most people would have had as our strongest XV at the start of pre-season, in brackets are their starts this year (out of 18 so far).

Le Roux (11)
Wade (5)
De Jong (13)
Gopperth (0)
Daly (11)
Sopoga (10)
Robson (
McIntyre (0)
Taylor (6)
Brookes (5)
Launchbury (6)
Gaskell (12)
Shields (7)
Young (7)
Hughes (

That’s 109 starts out of a possible 270 or about 40%.

Now, to be honest, I have no idea what that means in context, I have no intention of doing similar for other teams or other seasons. But it does seem very low to me, as that equates to on average only fielding 6 first choice players each Premiership game. Of course, our figures are made worse by having Jimmy and Chesty not start a single game (but it does exclude Mullan and Willis who also have 0 starts). It also shows that so far, only five players have started more than half of our games.

What it may help to illustrate is my hope for next year. I do honestly think that in losing Hughes, Daly, Le Roux etc we are losing some of our best players and that there will be a qualitative drop-off. But we should have a big boost in the availability of our better players: who is better Daly or Fekitoa, tough one, probably Daly just shades it, but which would you rather have, Daly for 15 games or Fekitoa for 25? Easier answer I think; Willie le Roux away for the summer and RWC or (hopefully) Dillyn Leyds available from pre-season onwards? Next year the RWC will strip several clubs of their best players for the start of the season and with the 6 Nations too, some players will be available for only about ½ their club games. We will likely be missing Launch, Brad, Minozzi, ZZ and Valianu (with the last three back by November). Of course we will have injuries, but surely not as bad as this year, and we’ve finally got some decent looking youngsters coming through too so I am back to feeling very positive about the club!

[mike909]

Interesting post - I think we really were struggling at times that too many players like MleB had to play too many games rather than be introduced gradually to the Prem and Wasps and without Jimmy, Lima was rather dropped in it too.

I think this "having to play" people has been a double edged sword. Our front row resources for next season look pretty good now, though it was a hard slog at times. But too many games for people needing a rest meant some losses and in turn, a drop in belief which resulted in part - in the poor run of games.

The big upside is the ability to pick in the the last two and next A games such a good looking team, now putting the sort of pressure on the first team selection that Dai is referring to.

I'd hope we get a decent pre season, that the RWC returnees are in one piece and we can rest them and that the incomers hit the ground running. I think we can compete and compete well next season.