Thanks. Bit of a risk to let our best player in any position go, but if the budget is tight it makes sense to release higher earners and fill the gaps from the academy.
I think every centre at the club apart from Farrell is more of a 12, but we'll have to shift a couple to 13 to get everyone gametime. Hawkshaw has the headstart, Gavin has the athleticism, Devine has the defensive intelligence and handling. I wouldn't sleep on Devine, only two weeks older than Gavin, and arguably a more rounded footballer. Only downside is he's not a particularly standout athlete and it's hard to see how he's going to progress only playing AIL 2B.
100% agreed about Tom Farrell. He's our only natural outside centre and we should keep him.
I haven't quite been able to put my finger on it but the way our attack is structured doesn't seem to bring Farrell into the game enough. Our attack would function a lot better if we were getting him on the ball running good lines. Instead Wilkins seems content to select distributing players there and rely on our wings to do damage after some neat midfield passing.
Feel like Devine will be a slow burner given the size of him. Even the likes of Hawkshaw who would be a similar height looks a good bit more powerful. Can see Ralston, Gavin and Hawkshaw Battling it out for 13 next year.
I'm the same, I would love to see some detailed analysis on our attacking shape as it's very different to most other teams to my eyes. We don't seem to run the very basic x-ball (ball carrier, short option on outside shoulder, option out the back) that's the foundation of pretty every attack in world rugby now. Scotland are a good example, they have a huge amount of shapes that are all variations of the x-ball, often designed to put Huw Jones into space. Our system is very different, we line up quite flat outside the ten and use a lot of short passes to players running hard lines. The Jansen try against Saracens is a good example of this working off first phase.
My feeling is that our attack isn't very good - only three teams in the URC have scored less tries than us. I think it works against weaker teams, as we are able to create and take advantage of one on ones against inferior players. However, without much deception (i.e. the option to play out the back) we are too easily shut down by the stronger teams we come up against. Would need someone with more time and expertise than me to break it down properly though.
I'm not a coaching or video analysis expert but all I see are lots of neat passes, Carty not having opportunities to identify space, one of the best inside centres in world rugby not getting dominant carries against weak shoulders with support runners, and very few examples of an outside centre hitting hard lines. Blade is overplaying too because he tends to take on responsibility when we're not generating space to attack.
I'm sure Mark Sexton and Wilkins have a grand plan for the attack but I worry about how we're going to see it when we have rarely fielded a consistent selection of backs all season.
Bit of a strange situation with Finlay being released back to us for the weekend initially (very unexpected for me) only to then be called back to Irish camp. Has he suddenly dropped down the pecking order?
I assumed he wasn’t included last weekend as they wanted to cap Jager and Finlay has a newborn. Made sense to let him home for the weekend last week. Then also made sense for him to get a bit of game time before being back on the bench for the England match.
Ya I'm hoping that's the case. Probably just reading too much into the whole thing. He has been excellent
Email there said there'll be 5.5k at the game (assuming based on sales so far) which would make it our biggest crowd of the year outside of Munster & Leinster.
Based on what Welsh supporters are saying Gatland will be keeping his full squad in camp this weekend. Good news for us. That will leave Scarlets with a very inexperienced backline.
5 points is definitely needed. Even though we got the 4 last week we still dropped a place. Very tight.
Would like to see Jansen come in at 8 this week with Prendergast and SHL. I'd start Carty too with maybe Reilly or McDonald and drop Blade. Would like to see Dowling and N Murray start in the row.
So that means Will M.Devine have no chance?
I'd be very surprised if we see more of Matthew Devine this season unless it's as a substitute when a game no longer matters. He's had five minutes of senior rugby in total and was only brought on to replace McDonald (3rd choice) when the Lyon game was done. If two of Blade, Reilly, and McDonald are fit he'll probably be working towards being an option for next season.
I haven't been keeping track of his AIL game time over the last couple of years but it looks like injuries (and perhaps lost gym development time as a result) have delayed his progress by a couple of seasons. He looked brilliant at U20 but the leap to senior isn't easy or automatic.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I understand well.
Ireland have confirmed that Oli Jager has a knee issue and didn't train today. Explains why Finlay returned even if some of the comms around it weren't exactly clear.
CONNACHT RUGBY MATCHDAY 23 VS SCARLETS
17:05, Saturday 2nd March 2024 @ Dexcom Stadium
Number/name/caps
15. Tiernan O’Halloran (230)
14. Byron Ralston(26)
13. David Hawkshaw (23)
12. Cathal Forde (22)
11. Andrew Smith (8)
10. JJ Hanrahan (13)
9. Caolin Blade (183) (C)
1. Peter Dooley (30)
2. Eoin de Buitléar (4)
3. Jack Aungier (61)
4. Niall Murray (67)
5. Gavin Thornbury (73)
6. Cian Prendergast (60)
7. Shamus Hurley-Langton (31)
8. Sean Jansen (4)
16. Dave Heffernan (190)
17. Denis Buckley (241)
18. Sam Illo (15)
19. Oisín Dowling (54)
20. Sean O’Brien (5)
21. Michael McDonald (6)
22. Jack Carty (205)
23. Conor Oliver (76)
de Buitléar starting is a bit random, but always happy to see a young homegrown guy get a shot. Presume he's been training well. From what I've seen of him thus far, he's extremely powerful in contact but needs some work on his throwing. With that in mind, I wonder if we've gone with Thornbury over Joyce in order to shore up the lineout, with such a young hooker starting. Excited to get another look at Jansen, loads of impact to come off the bench too. Backline very much as expected, looks like we're succession planning at 13.
Great to see Seán O'Brien back in contention. He's looked top quality whenever he's been on the pitch.
There are some very interesting selection calls there. That has to be our close to our current first choice from non-departing available players given the three week rest block coming up. The only caveat might be Wilkins givning game time to players to prove that they're worth a renewal.
There are few decent players in the Scarlets side but but we should be comfortably better than them:
Scarlets: Ioan Nicholas; Tomi Lewis, Johnny Williams, Eddie James; Steff Evans; Dan Jones, Efan Jones; Wyn Jones, Shaun Evans, Sam Wainwright, Alex Craig, Jac Price, Sam Lousi (capt), Dan Davis, Vaea Fifita.
Replacements: Eduan Swart, Steff Thomas, Joe Jones, Morgan Jones, Ben Williams, Archie Hughes, Charlie Titcombe, Ryan Conbeer.
Titcombe! That's a great name.... I'll get my coat...
6-2 Split on the bench, I wonder which irish team will be first to do a 7-1
We really need to take advantage of the next few games now before we get into the last 3 games that look very difficult.
Benetton will be very tough but we've got to look to get 19-20 points from the other 4 games. Scarlets situation is a sad sight. They've given us the runaround so many times over the years but they're a mess at the moment and we need to take advantage of that.
We need a reaction tomorrow to the Cardiff game. I appreciate Wilkins has to spin the positives of an away win for morale purposes but that performance was laughably bad and youd hope that standards are high enough within the group that they realise that. Tomorrow we need to be ruthless and put this game to bed early if we have any ambitions for the rest of the season.
We could do with running up some positive points difference too. After matches won it's the second tie breaker for league positions. The midfield is so tight that it could easily come down to a few extra points scored for a Top 8 position.
the best and worst of Caolin in the space of 5 minutes
This Scarlets team is pathetic, gotta put them to the sword here.
Dwayne Peel looks like he is on indeed.ie looking for a new job there
Poor try to conceed. All came from whatever Ralston was trying to do with that pass in midfield. Brought them into the game needlessly.
Hopefully can get another score before half time
Smith made a very poor read there, shooting out of the line when they had a 3 on 2 overlap.
Would like to see that again surely inside ball to blade for a walk in try there was a difficult finish for smith but he's well capable of it. Pity
This has all the makings of a game we could lose.....
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