RagingBull wrote: ↑Sat Oct 07, 2023 8:11 pm
I don't feel like we have the player depth right now to risk players on the whole if Mckeller doesn't want to focus on it, The coach made his call and I respect it. People saying it's a mistake before we see what happens rest of season is overreacting IMO.
Nail head
For me in a non world cup year with 11 players who we don't have a return date on. Just take care.
Names people threw out to play
Wells, 2nd row is the one position we have depth, but was definitely our strongest section of our team today with Carter, Chessum & Manz.
Cracknell, I certainly wouldn't have our 2 leading 7's in the same team and Ilione will have learnt more from that game. And maybe with Hatherall, Rogerson, Liebenberg & Cracknell rested we could have played one. As it is Carnduff & Ilione went in as both IMO prem standard players. Carnduff I think also picked up a hand injury. So would we have had one of those 4 injured instead.
Front row, we have 2 players each there, no depth to go deeper
(Whitcombe/Van Wyk, Dolly/Clare, Heyes/Hurd) any of those get injured and we're struggling with essentially a weaker bench option for Bristol.
Backs
Again with JvP and Youngs unavailable, risking Whiteley or Powell is foolish.
We had one of our leading fly half options playing 10 (2nd/3rd choice atm)
Centre's, well Woodward/Cusick are both getting there and not worth risking Kelly, Porter or Cokanasiga with Scott out (we do get Kata back soon, but I'd rather not chuck a player in to the deep end having just joined the club in a league game.
Back 3
With Simmons out, then I couldn't see us risking any of our leading 4 back 3 options (Brown, Shillcock, Hassell-Collins & Bassett are all too valuable)
Right so if we're not risking those who do we risk... well then those who played are the strongest we have.
As it is Carnduff getting an injury is almost worst case of those who played and we're still in a good position
Used to run around with an 11, 14 or 15 on my back.