Sale Sharks v Ospreys Jan 23rd at 1pm

OFF sorry but that is not entirely true, Scarlets for their game played in their 23 every player selected from the Welsh squad, except for Gareth Davies, we decided only to play Lake and Beard from our Wales contingent, we could have played many of the list you gave, whether it would have done us any good is another matter.

Deaves was excellent. Probably our best player. Lake was good at the breakdown and his throwing was far better although Sale strangely unlike Racing decided not to challenge. Sutton only had 15 minutes so hard to judge.

@Gaffer Ratti has always been more of an athlete than a rugby player but at the time he was here, he wanted to play second row and we had better options/prospects. Cardiff even dropped him to their Rags side before he changed to an 8 and made his way back to regional rugby.

@Gaffer but how many of those 23 should be full time professionals? There were a couple in the backline who should not be pro rugby players and at least a couple in the forwards. How much money could be redistributed towards better players?

It has been bad on the road all season. Treviso Connacht Scarlets Glasgow all ran up bonus points. It is not new. We have just had a few good defensive games at home

It was a white flag selection. I tend to agree we were lucky not to lose by 100 points. I understand why the likes of Rhys Davies Griffiths and Webb were held back for next week but why were Tom Francis Gareth Thomas Jac Morgan Owen Watkin and Gareth Anscombe not selected as none are available next week anyway.

@Fiddler That is a question that only Booth and possibly Pivac can answer. I'm not too sure that it would have affected the outcome all that much mind.

@ospreysfanforum I doubt very much we would have been as heavily defeated had our welsh squad players been fielded. We would have still been defeated.

@Tal now I am getting to watch the second half. From your comment, it does not bode well.

I thought Deaves showed up well in that first half.

@Fiddler Seriously? Well, I guess that means he is probably unlikely to be retained by us? At some point we have to stop waiting for potential to be fulfilled.

@ospreysfanforum Yep, unfortunately that looks the case. Do we know what his issue was? Clutching at straws but could it have been a minor thing and withdrawn for a precaution?

@ospreysfanforum It would be silly to let him go. He costs very little. The bigger question is do we need a 33 year old on relatively big money as our first choice. If you want to improve this squad you tackle the ageing declining bigger earners. Anscombe Webb Evans BBBD Fia. Their money would allow a spend on decent players. You would get nothing decent at all for Harri's money.

@TaI 0 points suggests no

No we are not within the top 24 squads in European rugby. We may sneak into the top sides if we could field our top team free of injury or rather the inevitable injuries had been more equally shared by the decent players and the crap players. It sucks and we all know it sucks but it sucked for Gloucester and Leicster and they have turned it around. It sucks for Bath but they will aim to turn it around. We just have to continue to work at it. We need to get better more experienced coaches into the building. We need to continually shed weak players, not offer pension type contracts to over the hill often injured players and we need to recruit a core of nwq players who are continually available

Looks to me as if the Edinburgh game is largely determining that selection. Seems bizzarre that players like Harri Morgan and Giles cannot get a game. Yet again no injury report.