Squad Rotation - A Basic Coaching Skill

THANKS to the sheer ferocity and physicality of the exchanges in the elite professional game today, squad rotation is perhaps the key skill in the Head Coach/Director of Rugby's armoury.

In Ice Hockey, the '60-minute man' – the player who is on-ice from the puck dropping to the final hooter, who stays on while lines around him change, such men of steel are lauded. In rugby, the closest we perhaps have is that rare front rower who stays on for 80 minutes. Such men are rare and nearly priceless. So, getting the personnel changes right, both in-game and from game to game, calls for shrewd thinking by the man picking the teams.

Early evidence seems to indicate this is a skill which Glasgow Warriors' Franco Smith possesses, so, it was interesting to see who he picked for Friday night's Scotstoun clash with AS Perpignan. One or two of the: “What the fuck is Smith doing picking him?” calls from the win at Bath paid off big style, so it was interesting to see who stayed in and who came in when the following team was announced (as ever in 1-23 order):

Jamie Bhatti, George Turner, Murphy Walker, Lewis Bean, Richie Gray, Matt Fagerson, Sione Vailanu, Jack Dempsey; George Horne, Duncan Weir, Rufus McLean, Huw Jones, Sione Tuipulotu (captain), Sebastian Cancilliere, Josh McKay. Replacements: Johnny Matthews, Nathan McBeth, Simon Berghan, JP du Preez, Sintu Mamjezi, Euan Ferrie, Ali Price, Tom Jordan.

Mr Smith is certainly ringing the changes and giving everyone a shot as showing what they can do in Europe. However, the chosen squad know – the other guys set the bar high last week and the pressure is on them to perform as well.

MEANWHILE – switching the game to Murrayfield, because the pitch at Scotstoun could not be guaranteed to be playable in the current Baltic climate raises the interesting question: Why lay-down all-weather pitches which aren't all-weather?” Thankfully, the hybrid pitch at HQ, with its undersoil heating, has saved the day.

I wondered last week, when Marr's Premiership game was called off – yet, I have seen them play on the 3g pitch at the school playing fields. If these pitches cannot stand a cold snap – they are not much good in Scotland.

A COUPLE of blog regulars have been in-touch regarding the plans to “relaunch” the Gallagher Premiership in season 2024-25. The plans appear to include a provision whereby reformed Wasps and Worcester Warriors will be able to re-enter the game at quite a high level.

One of these regulars, a London Scottish man of many years' standing is more than a bit perturbed at this news. After all, did not Scottish and Richmond, two clubs with as distinguished a history as Wasps, and certainly a better pedigree than Worcester, were banished to level nine – the very basement of the English game, and asked to fight their way back to the top, after their dreams of domination of the professional game came to nothing.

Shouldn't the same rules apply to the two Ws? Asks my friend. He has a point. Mind you, I feel any relaunch, any tinkering, is merely a reshuffle of the deck chairs as English rugby's version of RMS Titanic looks for another iceberg to hit.

The English model of professional club rugby is flawed – it cannot work in the same way as English football – and trying to make it so is not going to work.

Or, to put it another way – doing the same thing in the hope ofa different outcome is a sure sign of madness. Look at the accumulated debt of the English professional clubs, and their relaunch will be basically the same old, same old – madness.

SPEAKING OF – if not madness, what appears to me to be muddled thinking – we have today's announcement of professional contracts for 28 Scottish Women players.

I'm all in favour of this, the girls are representing Scotland at the highest level of the women's game, so, they have to be given the same support as the men.

However, they will be based with their current clubs, with many of them playing for English-based outfits. So, as we see with the Men, and with Scottish professional footballers – what happens when the demands of the SRU conflict with the demands of the girls' clubs?

I can see problems ahead, once again, as with Super6, there is an element of compromise between what the SRU might like to do in an ideal world, and what they can realistically do. However, let's not be too-critical, let's see how it works initially.