Over on BB I read that academy offers were made to West and John Devine.
Looking at the article about John Ryan in the 42, I wonder did Connacht make a play for him? He could have been an asset while we develop Illo. I recall that last year an effort was made to recruit Cronin at LH but it was reported that he took the better money on offer in France. Would Wasps have been offering much more than what would be available to us given the lowered salary cap in the Prem?
Brive and Newcastle in the Challenge Cup.
Been a few years since I've travelled for an away European match, think it was Wasps.
Newcastle could be good fun in December or January
Big Papa and Sammy Arnold hopefully get to play us.
French teams especially in the challenge cup use these games to up their French qualified players playing numbers, for Jiff rules
but it would be cool in a way to face them
Great honour for Bundee to captain Ireland against the Maori tomorrow, he'll be jacked to the max. I expect him to do something noteworthy, hopefully a try or crucial jackal turnover, but please don't let it be a card!
Peter Robb has signed for Ealing Trailfinders, hopefully it goes well for him and he can get a run without injuries over there!
That's great, maybe he'll get to play with them in the Prem, provided the ridiculous and unfair exclusion based on their ground capacity can be overcome. All the best to him.
No word on a tight head at all? Watching Ireland struggle with 3 choices at loosehead over a 5 game series should be alarm bells that three tight heads isn’t enough for a full season (hope they didn’t need that alarm)
There's Bealham, Aungier and Illo! Three tight heads.
That’s my point, three isn’t enough
Three isn't remotely close to enough. Bealham will presumably miss a few games at the start of the season, so straight away we have no redundancy. Really frustrating that for a second year in a row we are seemingly scrambling to find a prop long after every other team has their business concluded.
Bealham out at start of season and you need 4 at a very minimum and 5 at least to allow for injuries and to give players rest/weekends off...
This is why Tuimauga just retracted from Colomiers!
Well not exactly as he said he wanted to stay in N-Z with his family, but he could come back over again in November who knows!
I'm sure we'll get someone in at Th.
It's a buyers market at the moment so even if we don't have anyone signed up yet if we have budget we'll get someone in.
Doubt we'll get anyone of international quality but someone with a good number of caps at top club level should be doable.
Conor Carey must be an option you'd think.
Surely hookers more of a concern? Heffernan likely to be given time off after NZ tour and delahunt out until Christmas leaves DTM as the only senior hooker?
Where have you seen that? Was announced when he got injured that he was out for the rest of the season, haven't seen any updates since.
jesus that’s a bad one if true about delahunt.
I mentioned Hooker earlier in the year as being a spot needed to be added to and now it looks very bare. Add in that Bealham will be rested more and away with ireland we are very tight at TH too. Even for training purposes the front row will be under pressure.
We have two hookers in the academy so you'd imagine they can expect to see some game time. I can't imagine us signing another one tbh.
Th is different; illo is basically an academy prop and we've released drmc, Mcgrath and Tietie so we're down big numbers there.
Illo is expected to be third choice th and has shown more promise than either hooker at adult rugby. Gonna be looking at both DTM and de buitlear as first and second choice hookers for connacht come the start of the season
de buitlear only academy hooker and dtm unless another is added this summer
Tore his hamstring off the bone in 3 places, looking at 8/9 months
Damn, not in good shape at all at hooker in that case. de Buitléar is very young still, think he's a bit off the first team yet.
Has Conor Carey been transformed since we released him in 2019? If not, then I don't think he's the answer to our problems.
In addition to a proven pro, we should probably look at signing and AIL TH on a higher risk shot, @Lsdrugbyfan had some ideas of prospective candidates.
If we are limited to an IQ signing there aren't many potential answers. We certainly need an established pro who can come in immediately and contribute. A Thomas Connolly or Ben Griffin on a dev deal would be a nice luxury, but unless there's an A competition there may not be enough minutes available.
Declan Adamson too according to the website.
Don't know anything about the chap though.
Think Adamson was let go?
Isn’t Connolly a galway native too? Could be muxing him up but think I’m he’s from kinvara side?
Yeah connelly is Kinvara. Played wegians then came to leinster attention while playing ail with trinity
Sure of that?
Hamstring injuries post-surgery are 3-4 months usually, very upset by your number
Even 6 months would mean he'll miss only 1 or 2 games and we're ok with heff/tierney
9 would be totally different
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