BR - tough times

By Cherry Picker
June 4 2011

As club rugby takes a back seat, there's a lot going on at all sorts of other levels - and plenty of Gloucester players are involved in the long build-up towards the World Cup in New Zealand later in the year.  

And as they all battle for places on the plane to the other side of the world, there’s a chance for Glaws fans to take a look at some of England’s contenders next weekend.

There’s a Churchill Cup double-header at Kingsholm on Sunday (June 12) when England Saxons play Tonga (2:30) and Italy ‘A’ take on Russia (5:0).

Charlie Sharples and Henry Trinder are the latest Glaws players to break through to Saxons level, at which Luke Narraway was due to captain England against USA in the first Churchill game before being hit by injury.

But the likes of Narraway, Sharples, Trinder and Dave Attwood, who also played in the fist Sxons game, aren’t the only ones busy on international duty at present – with the World Cup getting closer, senior England squad members and those who qualify for other countries are all jockeying for position as coaches continue to work on building their squads.

And that makes life more complicated than it usually is for club coaches at this time of the year as they try to anticipate which of their players they are going to have to do without for a large part of the first half of the new season.

It’s probably a fair bet that next season’s Premiership will be won by the club with the strongest squad of non-internationals - at least the Premier League rather than the play-offs.

So Bryan Redpath at Glaws has his work cut out this summer replacing the senior players who have left the club and, on a temporary basis at least, replacing those who are going to be missing when the season starts.

The World Cup starts on September 10 and doesn’t finish until October 23, and the further a player goes in the competition, the more time he will need to recover when he gets home.

It’s all fairly quiet on the Kingsholm front at present, but hopefully Redpath will be beavering away trying to make sense of the most complicated close-season he and his rival coaches have come across for four years.

Wish him luck … he probably needs it.

Puzzling time for Premiership coaches

Discussion started by Shedloads (IP Logged), 04/06/2011 15:49

Shedloads
04/06/2011 15:49

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jedijase
06/06/2011 13:52

If the club get short-handed, they could always recall Danny Wright from "Cinderford".

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Dannyinnit
06/06/2011 14:25

Your Mum's never short handed with all the over time she's been putting in.

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