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How Shields and Sopoaga can help combat the biggest threat to Wasps' season
All Black Lima Sopoaga and former Hurricanes captain Brad Shields are being tasked with formulating a new attacking strategy for Wasps to ensure the inside knowledge of former players like Danny Cipriani, James Haskell and Charlie Piutau is not used against them this season.
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Highlanders No.10 Sopoaga and Shields, who was released by the Hurricanes to make his England debut against South African in June, have now linked up with Wasps after taking a break following their final Super rugby campaigns in New Zealand and have key roles to play, made even more important by the news that leading points scorer Jimmy Gopperth is out for up to nine months after knee surgery.
Dai Young, the Wasps director of rugby, told RugbyPass the departure of players such as Gloucester outside half Cipriani, who was central to the team’s exciting brand of attacking rugby, means changes have to be made as that inside knowledge can now be used by Premiership rivals.
Those Premiership players with immediate experience of life with Wasps also include Kyle Eastmond and Guy Thompson at Leicester while the Piutau brothers – Charlie and Siale- and Wallaby legend George Smith are in the newly promoted Bristol squad.
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Young said: “There are a lot of players out there in the Premiership who know us well and if we give them an opportunity to come back and hurt us they will.
“Every year you have to evolve and change things and those players will know a lot about us and we know a lot about them. Lima will help us with our play and we are going to have to change the policies to get where we need to be.
“Lima is a different player to Danny with other strengths and weaknesses and fundamentally we may have to adjust our game to suit his strength’s rather than Danny’s. We believe Lima is of similar quality to Danny although he will have different ways of getting us into certain areas. He won’t take long to settle and he is going to hit the ground running and also bring in some ideas to add to what we have.
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“Brad is recognised as a having great leadership skills and has been a captain from a young age. He sets standards on and off the pitch and that can only benefit everyone at the club.
“His incredible work rate in games puts him up there with the best. Defensively he is very strong and makes a lot of dominant tackles as well as being a good ball carrier and line out option. He is an international player and bringing that kind of experience from New Zealand is always beneficial and adds to the environment.
“We believe he can help us move forward on and off the pitch. He will be able to help Joe Launchbury because being captain is not an easy job and the more like-minded people who can share the workload and set the standards the better. Otherwise the captaincy can become a bit of a chore rather than an honour. We have a number of players who are very experienced but that doesn’t mean they want to stand out and lead but Brad is someone who will stand shoulder to shoulder with Joe.”
Young is looking forward to seeing the impact Shields can have on the development of exciting young flanker Jack Willis who is recovering from knee surgery.
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“Jack Willis will not be back from his knee operation until after Christmas but he will be able to learn from Brad and we saw the impact George Smith made when he was with us a couple of seasons ago. Brad can play 6 or 8 and Jack can play right across the back row and it was never a case of bringing Brad in for Jack. We believe Jack is an excellent prospect as we saw last season before his injury.
“It is great for the Premiership to have Charles (Piutau) back and his brother Siale was an unsung hero when he was with us. Charles is a phenomenal player and can either step you or just run over you – he has that ability. What can you say about George Smith? He is a fantastic player.”
Comments on RugbyPass
It’s not up to Wales to support Georgian Rugby. That’s up to International Rugby and Georgia. I sympathise with Georgia’s decent attempt to create this fixture. But for Wales the proposed match up is just a potential stick to beat them with and a potential big psychological blow that young Welsh team doesn’t need. (I’m Irish BTW.)
2 Go to commentsCale certainly looks great in space, but as you say, he has struggled in contact. At 23 years old, turning 24 this year, he should be close to full physical maturity and yet there exists a considerable gap in the power and physicality required for international rugby. Weight doesn’t automatically equate to power and physicality either. Can he go from a player who’s being physically dominated in Super rugby to physically dominating in international rugby in 1 or 2 years? That’s a big ask but he may end up being a late bloomer.
24 Go to commentsIf rugby wants to remain interesting in the AI era then it will need to work on changing the rules. AI will reduce the tactical advantage of smart game plans, will neutralize primary attacking weapons, and will move rugby from a being a game of inches to a game of millimetres. It will be about sheer athleticism and technique,about avoiding mistakes, and about referees. Many fans will find that boring. The answer is to add creative degrees of freedom to the game. The 50-22 is an example. But we can have fun inventing others, like the right to add more players for X minutes per game, or the equivalent of the 2-point conversion in American football, the ability to call a 12-player scrum, etc. Not saying these are great ideas, but making the point that the more of these alternatives you allow, the less AI will be able to lock down high-probability strategies. This is not because AI does not have the compute power, but because it has more choices and has less data, or less-specific data. That will take time and debate, but big, positive and immediate impact could be in the area of ref/TMO assistance. The technology is easily good enough today to detect forward passes, not-straight lineouts, offside at breakdown/scrum/lineout, obstruction, early/late tackles, and a lot of other things. WR should be ultra aggressive in doing this, as it will really help in an area in which the game is really struggling. In the long run there needs to be substantial creativity applied to the rules. Without that AI (along with all of the pro innovations) will turn rugby into a bash fest.
24 Go to commentsSouth Africa rarely play Ireland and France on these tours. Mostly, England, Scotland and Wales. I wonder why
1 Go to commentsIt was a let’s-see-what-you're-made-of type of a game. The Bulls do look good when the opposition allows them to, but Munster shut them down, and they could not find a way through. Jake should be very worried about their chances in the competition.
2 Go to commentsHats off to Fabian for a very impressive journey to date. Is it as ‘uniquely unlikely’ as Rugby Pass suggests, given Anton Segner’s journey at the Blues?
1 Go to commentsSad that this was not confirmed. When administrators talk about expanding the game they evidently don’t include pathways to the top tier of rugby for teams outside of the old boys club. Rugby deserves better, and certainly Georgia does.
2 Go to commentsLions might take him on if they move on Van Rooyen but I doubt he will want to go back, might consider it a step backwards for himself. Sharks would take him on but if Plumtree goes on to win the challenge cup they will keep him on. Also sharks showing some promising signs recently. Stormers and Bulls are stable and Springboks are already filled up. Quality coach though, interesting to see where he ends up
1 Go to commentsAnd the person responsible for creating a culture of accountability is?
3 Go to commentsMore useless words from Ben Smith -Please get another team to write about. SA really dont need your input, it suck anyway.
264 Go to commentsThis disgraceful episode must result in management and coach team sackings. A new manager with worse results than previous and the coaching staff need to coached. Awful massacre led by donkeys.
1 Go to commentsInteresting article with one glaring mistake. This sentence: “And between the top four nations right now, Ireland, France, South Africa, and New Zealand…” should read: And between the top four nations right now, South Africa, Ireland, New Zealand and France…”. Get it right wistful thinkers, its not that hard.
24 Go to commentsHow did Penny get the gig anyway?
3 Go to commentsNice write up Nick and I would have agreed a week ago. However as you would know Cale & co got absolutely monstered by the Blues back row of Sotutu, Ioane and Papaliti and not all of these 3 are guaranteed a start in the Black jumper. He may need to put some kgs before stepping up, Spring tour? After the week end Joe will be a bit more restless. Will need to pick a mobile tough pack for Wales and hope England does the right thing and bashes the ABs. I like your last paragraph but I would bring Swinton, Hannigan into the 6 role and Bobby V to 8
24 Go to commentsThe Crusaders can still get in to the Play Off’s. The imminent return of outstanding captain Scott Barrett and his All Black team mate Codie Taylor will be a big boost.There are others like Tamaiti Williams too. Two home games coming up. Fellow Crusader fans get there and support these guys. I will be.
2 Go to commentsCant get more Wellington than Proctor.
2 Go to commentsWhy not let the media decide. Like how they choose the head coach. Like most of us we entrust the rugby system to choose. A rugby team includes the coaches. It's collective.
14 Go to commentsHi NIck, I have been very impressed with him and he seems a smart player who can see opportunities which Bobby V _(who must be an international 6_) doesn’t see or have the speed to take advantage of. If he continues to improve and puts on 5kgs then he could be a great 8. He is a bit taller than Keiran Reid at 1.93m and 111 kgs, so his skill set fits his body size and who knows where it will lead. I hope the spate of Achilles tendon issues have been dealt with by the S&C people. It’s been a very long time since Mark Loane and Kefu stood out at 8. The question is will we be able to hold onto him, if he does make it he will be pretty hot property. I disagree with the idea of letting them go to the Northern Hemisphere and then bring them back.
24 Go to commentsBilly Fulton 🤣🤣🤣🤣 garrrmon not even close
14 Go to commentsDoes the AI take into account refs? hahaha Seriously why not have two on field refs to avoid bias?
24 Go to comments