Dave K. wrote:If that's the wingers, Rovers will just put high kicks up to the wingers and cause us massive problems.
Talanoa shouldn't play on the wing again, unless we are short, lacks too many basic wingers skills to play there.
Couldn't agree more and those previously sayomg putting him at centre miss his other obvious failing.
Micheals and Carlos played on the left against Rovers in the friendly and worked extremely well together. Talanoa has being fairly dissapointing overall and his defensive frailty outweighs his attacking prowess IMHO. I can't see Radford dropping Yeaman, he needs to play it safe and whilst it's a retrograde step Yeaman and Micheals on the left is far more defensively sound than Carlos and Talanoa. Even if Fonoa is picked that side is still a concern until someone figures out why those inside are not doing their job defensively. Micheals has being a lamb to the slaughter far too often.
ATEOTD we need to dictate the pace and how the game is played. If we allow them to keep turning our pack around and don't pressure their kicker we'll tire and put ourselves at risk of our forwards falling off the cliff. Radford just has to recognise BEFORE a player is fooked and interchange him.
Joined: Sep 23 2008 Posts: 1894 Location: Top of the East Stand
Unless there's any injuries for Rover's, their back line will no doubt be the same. In which case, I would maybe give Lancaster a shot on the left edge. I wasn't that impressed with Naughton, and didn't think he did himself any favours to warrant a starting spot this week. In the friendly Derby, two of rover's tries in the last 20 were due to naughton being out positionally, so unless he's sured that up, I feel they may target him again.
Out of our backs from last week, I'd say Shaul and Yeaman were the two guarantees, with the other three positions a pick from Michaels, Logan, Tala, Fonua, Naughton and Lancaster.
Carlos and Sneyd in the halves.
Forwards much the same. Would look at getting Thompson back in somewhere as I think he was unlucky to miss out last week and had performed pretty consistently before that.
radford needs to revert to playing ellis and pritchard from the bench. He needs to spell mini and manu properly and give houghton a breather at some stage
Joined: Sep 23 2008 Posts: 1894 Location: Top of the East Stand
Jake the Peg wrote:radford needs to revert to playing ellis and pritchard from the bench. He needs to spell mini and manu properly and give houghton a breather at some stage
Get back to starting Thompson at 13 and shift Ellis to the bench for one of Green or Watts?
Just need to stop this reverting back to a safety first policy, we go into our shells, don't try anything and produce the same old boring predictable performances. Instead of panicking after a couple of close defeats and going all safety first, Radford needs to work out how to get this team closing them close ones out. Not completely changing the style of play completely. Pritchard and ellis on bench, interchanging with manu, mini, get our 2nd rowers playing wider out, instead trundling it down the middle every time, and try getting back to some off load, support play rugby. Defensively don't have us so narrow, need to start trusting the inside man, ie, second rowers not so far in, should help with the Centre/wing defensive frailties
unknownlegend wrote:Every one of us are hoping and praying that our players are up for this one, the dark side fans don't have to, it's a given they will be sweating blood to beat us! Why should that be?
We certainly never sweat any blood in Derby's under Chester, I thought it was noticeable how out enthused we were in nearly all our games against you in the last 18 months, the KC game last year aside when we beat you more because you were just plain awful that day.
Radford has instilled a lot of derby pride in your team and I'm hoping Webster can get into ours.
I'll go for either a close Rovers win or a biggish Hull one.
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