Quote: the artist "well after the 2 superleague friendlies, i would start with rankin and horne. rankin is excellent and looks nailed on for the no.6 position, whilst horne offers you experience at no.7, and is still a good player despite what you read on this forum. he also offers you superior defence to miller, which is important in the modern game as clubs will always target a weak defender. its early days but they should compliment each other well. then we've got miller knocking on the door keeping those 2 on their toes. millers time will come but i don't think at this point he's capable of leading us round the pitch week in week out.
imo we don't need heremaia in the halves unless we have an injury crisis. he should be able to concentrate on sharing the hooking role'"
Completely agree with most of that. Rankin and Horne should start on today's showing. Certainly lived up to his forum promises, Rankin - I'm impressed with, er, first impressions. All good! But Horne's not a scrum-half, he can't direct play, organize and lead games. He hates it and we lose more often then not. Horney is an out and out off-half, relishes it and thrives there. Player of the season there last year until injury.
Miller's our only true scrum half. I'm all for giving him every chance. Young, inexperienced et al, but Rankin's taken the bull by the horns in his first friendly, after pronouncing to all and sundry - bullishly - that he was going to do just that. Frankly, Miller hasn't put his money where his mouth is at all yet to mirror that attitude. But Rankin's another off-half, albeit that he showed good decision-making and kicking today. Can he step effortlessly up to seven? Or would he be another hexagon forced, Horne-like, into an heptagonal hole?
Do we go with Miller the only SH we have, although green? Or Rankin, an off-half who has demonstrated he can grasp the nettle? Is the gamble worth it in this case?
Dunno. What I do know is that we are entering yet another season with no proven scrum half.
