George Smith
Ted Thorn (20)
The Shore side to face Grammar has lost the following players to opens:
Nathan Lucas, Jum Woodhill, Jack Clancy, Nick Clancy and Harry Emery, so in no way should be considered full strength.
While Shore maybe are missing a few players the biggest impact I see is in their backs.
It appears the Shore forward pack is working well (even without Woodhill & Lucas) and worked very well against Joeys and Kings but the backs are inexperienced at this level. I understand they are missing ALL bar one of their backline (Connelly) from last year. That is, Emery, Clancy, Clancy, Merriman, Cooke, Mactier. 4 of these players were 2011 rep players. The last one may be playing this week though.
But this is no different to most of the strong rugby schools this year. All the strong 15s from last year have provided significant numbers to the opens and many have the usual list of injuries. This only makes for a closer competition in 2012.