Quote: Zig "We monitor our players scientifically so we know how fatigued they are. Sooner or later our schedule was bound to catch up with us, it did today. In my view, and I know it is easy to be clever after the event, we should have rested the likes of Thompson, Havard, Farrell and Ellis. We need those four firing on all cylinders when it matters. Dupree, Eseh, Chan and Hill should have been in our 17 along with Byrne and Mago who have both played limited minutes.'"
Peet obviously doesn’t think that Eseh and Chan are ready and possibly may never be ready. Hill looks really slow this season and maybe it’s just a case of a second year performance after a very encouraging first season. Mago is just Mago. Seemingly incapable of playing for periods longer than 15 minutes and doesn’t appear to be any fitter nearly 3 years after joining us. His main attribute of off loading has almost disappeared and his deficiencies in defence are still there. Byrne is an enigma. Giant of a man but his main attribute is his defensive work with very little impact with ball in hand.
Depth of the squad was our mantra from the very outset this season with a few already saying that we don’t need any new blood in the squad for next season. The last few weeks would suggest that maybe the strength in depth from a qualitative perspective is just a fallacy. Of the new signings for 2024 only Thompson has looked like a really good acquisition. I still have high hopes for Walters, Eseh and Hill but maybe for the longer term rather than here and now.
I hope that Peet can steady the ship and get the season back on track. He gets the vast majority of calls correct so for me we have to accept that occasionally he will get it wrong but hopefully he and the team will learn from it.
Smith will probably gain from the rest that his suspension will bring and it will be interesting to see how young Farrimond will cope with the additional responsibilities.
Will be interesting to see how we react next weekend.