Myler is too good to be looking ahead at the season and possibly not playing first grade. Right time to move on: you can’t just keep endless reserves of players; it works better when the young talent is coming through and trying to push past the senior player, rather than two senior players for one spot.

We haven't had enough quality come through the juniors consistently enough to put pressure on senior players. That might be changing, but hopefully the lesson has been learned that development isn't a tap you can turn on and off at will, you need to keep it going, even if it means developing quality juniors that go elsewhere.

100% spot on. I hope you're right and it is changing.next The club's been too easily drawn into a next great white hope mindset for too long. The overhaul of the starting 17 is welcome. Let's hope the same applies to player development.

Developing youngsters is the only long term sustainable way for any club. I don’t understand why clubs wouldn’t do it, it’s cheaper, you get to decide which players you try to keep (rather than sign) and you can constantly improve the quality of the squad if you get it right. There’s no negative.

Glad to see the club are taking it seriously again.

I'm convinced it is all psychological at this point. There is no way that a player has got to top-flite level rugby without the ability to catch a ball. He has got into his own head, and is now dropping the ball before it has left the other players hands.

The club needs to be putting him in front of a sports psychologist and then giving him some confidence building catching drills. Once he sorted the basic handling errors, he should be a reasonable cover player.

On another note, a coach friend of mine suggested that his errors look like those made by someone who habitually overuses grip spray. I've never used the stuff, but surely it would take a coach 5 minutes to check.

Not sure about the grip spray stuff but it’s not uncommon for players of all sports to get the yips.

As others have said I don’t remember him habitually making errors like this at Cas, that seemed to be much more aimed at Eden.

Wrt Olpherts I must admit when I saw him play for Cas I always thought he looked ok.
However after he signed for us a number of Cas supporters I spoke to said he quite often had a mistake or two in him.
Sour grapes I thought but after seeing him play for us it did ring true.

It definitely looks to me like a mental issue like the yips. Maybe starting when he had a bad game against Cas at the start of last season, and got worse feom there. He wouldn't be anywhere near the squad if he genuinely couldn't catch a ball.

Care to elaborate re. "Taking it Seriously again?"

Sure, for years the club didn’t put enough emphasis on the continual improvement of the junior set up, it was simply paying lip service to the development of younger players. We brought John Bastian back and things changed, we took it seriously again, and we are now starting to see the fruits of our labours. We should be able to produce at least one squad quality back and forward each year, and one international quality player every 3 years or so if we are doing it properly.