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Martin's Midweek Meander

Martin's Midweek Meander

Nick Patterson1 Dec 2016 - 12:14
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This Week's Thoughts from Martin Whitcombe

Let me start this week’s ruminations with a list.

Roger Raper, Ben Greaves, Nick Gore, Brett Mitchell, Adam Mitchell, Mani Riaz and Tom Booth.

Seven of the club’s Senior players and arguably seven that should be in our match day 18 this week. Why have I drawn attention to these seven?

The answer is that I am delighted to be able to welcome all seven back into contention for this Saturday’s encounter with Penrith. I could also have added Richard Hughes to that list, but we are asking Hughesy to be available next week at Alnwick if at all possible.

Anyone watching the Bees this season must have noticed the almost continuously revolving door in and out of our First XV over our first 12 games. This is not what we planned for, I can honestly assure you of that. Benny, Ali and myself thought there might be a bit of shuffling of the deck in the opening two or three fixtures before we settled down to a core set of players that would form our preferred selection.

We have had predictably a few injuries that have thrown us off course, not least G’s absence for five or six weeks, and we have also had quite a bit of disruption from lads having difficult working patterns which meant they were unable to train – for example, this has restricted Nick Gore and Dom Copsey to about six games between them this season and on top of that we have had one or two away watching Internationals – we have lost Michael Crotch, Mat Cochrane and Richard Tafa this week to the lure of England playing Australia. That is not meant as a criticism, by the way, work commitments should come first and also everyone should get a chance to watch England play “in the flesh” so the lads should take the opportunity if they get their hands on a ticket.

Having said that, I am struggling with what the RFU should do to counter balance playing 4 internationals every November with the needs of every grass roots Rugby Club in the country.

We can’t expect our lads to be available for a Friday night kick off if it means taking time off work, or to lose a Sunday to perhaps travel to the Scottish Borders for a league game on a Sunday afternoon. It is also the wrong time of year to take a break from the league programme if we are to allow any room in the schedule after Christmas to accommodate postponements due to the weather. Perhaps perhaps we could have a free Saturday or two when any of the top line travelling sides are playing –for example, I am sure we could make a cracking day of it if we had a club-wide event, then some lunch and all sat down to watch England v Australia this Saturday.

After Christmas we all look forward to the 6 Nations tournament. However, we have always seemed to struggle with the 6 Nations having an impact on player availability in Yorkshire – it has always seemed impossible to get a twelve noon kick off when the international is on at three pm - is it ALWAYS lambing time up the Dales? - and it is not as though the fixtures come round as a surprise, the fixtures are published 12 months in advance!

Back to the matter in hand, The Bees.

The fact that we have continued to build a winning run over the last few weeks with 6, 7 or 8 changes week on week must be evidence that we have some good strength in depth and the emergence of Ryan Wilson, Connor Capper and Mike Johannides has been a bonus for us this term.

The down side has been that we have not had a steady Second Team week in and week out as whatever side we pick on a Tuesday might have 7 absentees come Saturday. The club has at least 70 registered Senior Players, so actual numbers of bodies paying their money to register as a player seems not be the problem.

I hope that with the First Team squad now approaching full strength we can rotate some experienced players back into the Second Team squad to help our very young second string. The Second Team is an area we will be focusing on in the next few weeks as the club simply cannot afford to lose the Twos and we really wanted to be building towards fielding a third team, which the registered playing numbers suggest we should be able to put out, not struggling to raise a Seconds

Looking forward to Saturday, I believe Penrith will be the toughest side we have played thus far. I know West Hartlepool are top of the league and gave us a good hiding earlier in the season, but we were hugely off colour the day we played Wests and looking at Penrith’s results, I’d say they should be top of the pile – and would be if their game last week had not been called off. From a brief look at their match reports, it seems they play a lot of their rugby in their backs and the tries scored column seems to back this up. Their full back already has 12 tries this season, their wingers have 5 or 6 apiece and I believe the scrum half has chipped in with half a dozen too. It seems we will have to be top notch in our defence against a side who get it wide as often as possible, but on the other hand I would hope we have a player or two who can cause their defence some problems too – all in all it should be a cracking game.

I look to having a chat in the bar on Saturday.

Martin

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