Gloucester
Redpath happy as countdown continues
BR - happy and nervous
By Cherry Picker
August 17 2011
Not long to go now. After the interminable wait, Gkoucester are at last close to playing rugby again ... you know, proper matches with tackles, kicks, tries (we hope) and refs (who probably still won't properly enforce the scrum) when they welcome London Welsh to Kingsholm on Saturday.
It’s probably not going to be the stiffest test of the year, but it’s hopefully going to be close, and with only one more pre-season game – against Russia a week on Friday night (Aug 26) – coach Bryan Redpath will be hoping it serves its purpose.
With a couple of full-contact training sessions against Bristol thrown in, Redpath believes his squad will be raring to go by the time the main attraction comes round at Northampton on Sunday September 4.
Like every other coach in the Premiership, of course, Redpath is aware of the potential problems likely to be caused by the World Cup. How he and his opposite numbers cope with these problems will have a major influence on how the whole season goes.
It’s a long road, of course, and the honours will go to the stayers rather than the sprinters.
But Redpath has faith in his squad and believes they will cope.
He told the Citizen: "The improvements we've seen in some of the players has been quite dramatic quite quickly.
"We've got young boys who are stepping up and we've got guys who were potentially second or third choice in the previous two or three seasons that they've been here, and suddenly they are now put in the shop window and asked to front up massively.
"It's going to be a tough eight or nine weeks. We're asking them to up the fitness levels, up the contact levels, up the concentration levels and play at the top end for us to be successful.
"Now we're putting them to the ultimate test, without giving them a bedding-in time. And of course World Cup year only makes that even harder.”
But he added: "I'm pretty happy on the whole. I'm nervous about it, but I'm always nervous about the start of the season."
The London Welsh game is just the start, of course, but if Redpath is “pretty happy”, then perhaps we all have a right to feel the same way.
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17/08/2011 11:22
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But we're also missing Akapusi Qera to Fiji, Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu to Samoa, Alasdair Strokosch, Rory Lawson, Scott Lawson and Jim Hamilton to Scotland. Off the top of my head, I think that's it, so 7 altogether will be Glaws' representation at the World Cup.
How about your Saints? Other than the England players, which others will you be losing?
Tongahuia, Hartley, Lawes, Wood, Pisi, Artemiev, Ashton, Foden
Think that's it. Probably missed one!
