The Ospreys will play Newcastle Falcons in the Challenge Cup Round of 16
The fixture will tale place across April 2/3/4
If we can win that, we would then be away to the winners of the Tigers/Connacht game (Tigers again?) a week later.
Important that our Team Wales boys are back and our injury list shortened by the end of this month.
Adam Beard is not part of the 23 for Italy but is going to Rome. Pivac said he was pretty banged up. Hopefully this week off gives him a chance to rest and recover.
Jason, Nicky is also called up to TW, as Rhodri is out injured also Owen is released back to us for Glasgow, unless Gareth Thomas is back off the injured list we are in real trouble at loosehead.
Fiddler did you read that on page 2 of todays RP, if so I read that as only being for the Champions Cup, it probably does also apply to the Challenge Cup, but I'd appreciate clarification if at all possible.
Yes Wayne that is where I read it. Not certain it is coming in but if it does it would be a surprise if the same principles were not applied to the Challenge Cup.
Latest update in TRP on euro draw is that for round of 16 they propose an open draw rather than a seeded one. Only teams with two genuine wins rather than awarded wins are guaranteed home matches and teams from the same country cannot meet in round of 16. This was for main competition but would imagine same for secondary competition. May be better for us than the getting the proposed seeded draw given the recent form Harlequins have been showing.
Hope LS is available to us and we don’t have the debacle of playing a euro qtr in cardiff again or in PYS. There’ll be some very good teams to play but just hope it’s able to go ahead. The landscape is changing daily with more COVID variants appearing now.
I think Quins are ranked 11 and Dargons 10 based on points difference if they are looking at results as a whole. If they allocate by conference then although Dargons have better points difference than quins they are bottom of heir conference whilst Quins are second from bottom of theirs.
Depends if booth thinks we have the squad to compete on both fronts. Clarke fielded younger players to save the squad and we struggled, but I guess it gave some of the players we have today some valuable experience. I’d like to see us take it seriously but as i understand it, teams from the HC drop into our tournament at some point, so even if we do well at the group stage we would likely end up playing some big HC team. Bristol won the challenge cup but they are a strong team...i Fear we‘re just not strong enough to win this tournament.
The Ospreys will play Newcastle Falcons in the Challenge Cup Round of 16
The fixture will tale place across April 2/3/4
If we can win that, we would then be away to the winners of the Tigers/Connacht game (Tigers again?) a week later.
Important that our Team Wales boys are back and our injury list shortened by the end of this month.
Adam Beard is not part of the 23 for Italy but is going to Rome. Pivac said he was pretty banged up. Hopefully this week off gives him a chance to rest and recover.
Yes you are right Fiddler, I too would be surprised if the Challenge Cup was different.
Fiddler did you read that on page 2 of todays RP, if so I read that as only being for the Champions Cup, it probably does also apply to the Challenge Cup, but I'd appreciate clarification if at all possible.
Latest update in TRP on euro draw is that for round of 16 they propose an open draw rather than a seeded one. Only teams with two genuine wins rather than awarded wins are guaranteed home matches and teams from the same country cannot meet in round of 16. This was for main competition but would imagine same for secondary competition. May be better for us than the getting the proposed seeded draw given the recent form Harlequins have been showing.
Hope LS is available to us and we don’t have the debacle of playing a euro qtr in cardiff again or in PYS. There’ll be some very good teams to play but just hope it’s able to go ahead. The landscape is changing daily with more COVID variants appearing now.
According to a poster on Twitter, we should be playing the Dragons in the first knockout round of the Challenge Cup. The fixtures look like this....
London Irish (1) v Glasgow (12)
Ospreys (2) v Dragons (11)
Cardiff (3) v Harlequins (10)
Leicester (4) v Montpellier (9)
Bath (8) v Zebre (13)
Connacht (7) v Agen (14)
Northampton (6) v Benetton (15)
Ulster (5) v Newcastle (16)
The winners of our match would then play the winners of the Connacht v Agen game.
London Irish (1) or Glasgow (12) v Bath (8) or Zebre (13)
Cardiff (3) or Harlequins (10) v Northampton (6) or Benetton (15)
Ospreys (2) or Dragons (11) v Connacht (7) or Agen (14)
Ulster (5) or Newcastle (16) v Leicester (4) or Montpellier (9)
Highest rank hosts the QF
And the semi-finals would be...
London Irish (1), Glasgow (12), Bath (8) or Zebre (13) v Cardiff (3), Harlequins (10), Northampton (6) or Benetton (15)
Ospreys (2), Dragons (11), Connacht (7) or Agen (14) v Ulster (5), Newcastle (16), Leicester (4) or Montpellier (9)
Highest ranked side hosts the SF.
If we really go for this, we would have home fixtures all the way to the final.
Depends if booth thinks we have the squad to compete on both fronts. Clarke fielded younger players to save the squad and we struggled, but I guess it gave some of the players we have today some valuable experience. I’d like to see us take it seriously but as i understand it, teams from the HC drop into our tournament at some point, so even if we do well at the group stage we would likely end up playing some big HC team. Bristol won the challenge cup but they are a strong team...i Fear we‘re just not strong enough to win this tournament.
if we can get some sort of consistency we could do alright in this group "hopefully ".