Tuesday’s Rugby News has hopeful words from Dave Wessels, interesting words from Daryl Gibson, injuries at the Brumbies and transfer rumours
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Force Can Be Superest
Western Force coach Dave Wessels reckons that if his team can stay in Super Rugby, they, uh, can win the thing next year.
No, really.
“It will be quite an emotional week [with Matt Hodgson leaving] for the club, there’s not many players who got to exit stage left on their own terms and Hodgo deserves it,” Wessels told the Daily Telegraph.
“My challenge will be to keep those emotions in check so we can actually get a performance up.”
We’ll get to the title talk soon, but as these things go, Wessels was asked about the Force’s situation.
“Just the way the Western Australian community has rallied behind the team has been special,” he said.
“We started out a few months ago feeling pretty disconnected from the community, but since all this has happened we’ve come to realise that people really care about this team, we actually mean something.
“In many ways the staff situation keeps me up a fair bit, because I know the challenges facing them. If things don’t fall our way, the other teams have staff in place. The players will be absorbed in other teams but there are only a certain amount of rugby jobs in this country.
“I have three senior staff members who have had babies in the last three months, that is stuff to worry about. The players have taken a lot from the staff. The staff have acted magnificently in tough circumstances and the players have followed their lead.”
Alright, here we go. Title talk!
“My approach right from the start was that there are a lot of reasons we as a club are in this situation, because we haven’t delivered the goods for a long time now. That is why we’re on the chopping block.
“There are a lot of people on the board fighting very hard, for us as a playing group it’s all about performance on the field.
“The playing group has stayed committed and I’m pretty proud of that. I think we’re building something special. If we can keep this group together I’m certain we’ll be an extremely competitive team.
“We have got a plan for 18 months’ time, that we’re getting out a team that can win Super Rugby.
“We need to build towards that and get better individually and as a team. Guys need to learn to play in pressure situations, learn what works on the road, learn to manage sleep, there’s a whole lot of stuff to improve on and in 18 months we could be a genuinely competitive team.”
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Tahs To Rooters
Daryl Gibson has pulled off a coaching masterstroke, watching the Sydney Roosters from the Kippax Park bushes and surmising that he might do what they’re doing. The Roosters went from not to hot, and their coach Trent Robinson reckons it’s cos they changed their pre-season routine.
“It’s worked very well for him this season, he definitely had a shake-up after his results last year,” Gibson told AAP (via the SMH), presumably still in his ghillie suit.
“It’s something that we’re going to follow. They changed their pre-season schedule to what they had been following for the last nine years.
“I think it’s time for us to have a little shake-up of when we do our hard days, our heavy days, our days off, all that scheduling that goes into pre- season.
“There’s change all over the place. We’re going through numerous internal and external reviews that will unearth those problems that I’ve talked about and then having the courage to make the change.”
Gibson is still scratching his head, after he realised that his charges are fatter and slower than he’d like.
‘We’ve had to pare our game back quite a lot from that wild sort of expansive style that we’ve tried to play to a more pragmatic field,” Gibson continued.
“I thought at the start of the season we would be far more mobile than what we were and a faster team.
“What we’ve found is we’re still quite a big team and didn’t move quite as well as what we’d hoped, so that restricts us from what we’re trying to do.”
Anyway, this all comes in light of the SMH also reporting that Waratahs players have told their clubland teammates that they’ve lost faith in Gibson.
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Brumbies Backless
The Brumbies pretty much had no chance in the Super Rugby finals, but now they’ll be lucky to get nil with the news that Aiden Toua and the Rugby Report Card’s favourite, Kyle Godwin, have been ruled out.
Toua has suffered a high-ankle sprain, and will miss at least 4 weeks, while Godwin has got knee-knack, which will keep him out for 3 months.
These two join Saia Fainga’a (foot) and Lausii Taliuali (knee), as well as the hopes and dreams of Australian rugby, on the treatment table.
Chris Alcock (thigh) is also set to miss the last regular season game, against the Chiefs, but should be right for the quarter-final.
Brumbies coach Stephen Larkham is a little bit sad.
“We are disappointed for the guys who have done so much for us this year,” Larkham told rugby.com.au.
“The boys may not be able to take to the park in finals but they will certainly take part in the preparation with the rest of the team.”
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DHP to Join Rebels*
Dane Haylett-Petty will join the Melbourne Rebels if the Western Force get the chop, reports the SMH.
DHP, the superhero to Mike Brown’s supervillain, has already signed with the Force until 2019, but it seems as Daney old boy has himself a back-up plan.
Rumours on the grape vine say that many Force players have secretly signed Plan B contracts with the Rebels in case their team gets chopped, and let’s be honest, if it does turn out that the Force gets chopped it’d be beneficial for the Rebels to basically cut their current players if favour of the Force’s.
Meanwhile, Chance Peni’s (tee hee) has been nixed after the Sanzaar Wheel O’ Suspension Fortune landed on ‘3 weeks’. Peni accidentally elbowed old mate in the face on the weekend.
At the time, Peni was given a yellow card but Sanzaar ain’t having a bar of that. He was originally going to get done for 6 weeks, but that was revised.
“However, taking into account mitigating factors including the Player’s youth and inexperience in rugby, his clear judicial record and the fact he pleaded guilty at the earliest available opportunity, the Foul Play Review Committee reduced the suspension to three weeks,” committee chairman Nigel Hampton, QC, said according to rugby.com.au.
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