The bulk of the 23 and pretty much all the players I would want to retain are 23 and under and are in their first couple of years of professional rugby. The issue is that we probably only want 5 of those guys in the 23, not 12 as was the case in week 1.
We lost half our squad after the 2019 season, the other half after the 2020 season. It’s all new young faces (not big expensive signings). You normally bring in people of this calibre at a dribble, a couple at a time so they can get experience and learn from the old hands. Not at the rate of half a squad a season over two seasons.
I'm amazed people are expecting much different from the team.
There was a lot of talk for 2020 that they'd be wooden spooners. They outperformed the expectation. They're in a worse position now having again lost half the squad and now even less experience.
It's a complete failure in planning and player management. I feel this is more of a management issue than Penney? But I'm not certain of who is in charge of such things as player turnover and making sure we're doing things intelligently. A team should always be bringing new players up, not making wholesale changes like this.
But that's where we are. That's the point we've been left in. For what we have, expectations should really only be on seeing improvement week to week. Did the Tahs look better last week than against the Reds? I'd say no, but I'll also give them a third week at least before going drastic.
