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'Tough day at the office' - 39-year-old Gavin Henson played most of his league debut with a broken finger
By Josh Raisey
Former Grand Slam winner Gavin Henson has said he will get 'more and more confident with each game,' after dislocating his finger in his rugby league debut for League 1 side West Wales Raiders.
The 39-year-old was making his bow in a new code against Championship side Widnes Vikings in round one of the Challenge Cup, and played on despite the injury to his finger.
Before the match on Sunday, the former Wales, and British and Irish Lions centre said he would have liked a few more games under his belt before such a big match, but said he was “excited”.
“I’ve been playing rugby union for nearly 20 years,” he said. “So ideally for such a big game I would have loved to have played about six games before this one but I haven’t.
“I didn’t sleep very well, I don’t know whether that was because of Wales versus France last night. I felt pretty sick after that game last night. But I’m pretty excited.”
Henson’s new side fell to a 58-4 loss, but he remained confident that he will improve and that his baptism of fire will pay off. He said: “Tough day at the office. Broke my finger, dislocated it pretty early on, so that didn’t help my handling. I enjoyed it. It’s a good game. I think I’ll get more and more confident with each game. Obviously tough going up against a team like Widnes starting off, but hopefully when the league starts we’ll be better for that game and I will be better as well.”
This is the latest instalment in the varied career of the Welshman, which saw him play for a multitude of clubs in union. These included Llanelli, the Ospreys, Cardiff Blues and the Dragons in Wales; Saracens, London Welsh, Bath and Bristol in England, as well as a stint in France with Toulon.
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Latest Comments
"Right, so even if they were the 4 worst teams in Champions Cup, you'd still have them back by default?"
I think (i) this would literally never happen, (ii) it technically couldn't quite happen, given at least 1 team would qualify via the challenge cup, so if the actual worst team in the CC qualified it would have to be because they did really well after being knocked down to the challenge cup.
But the 13th-15th teams could qualify and to be fair I didn't think about this as a possibility. I don't think a team should be able to qualify via the Champions Cup if they finish last in their group.
Overall though I like my idea best because my thinking is, each league should get a few qualification spots, and then the rest of the spots should go to the next best teams who have proven an ability to be competitive in the champions cup. The elite French clubs generally make up the bulk of the semi-final spots, but that doesn't (necessarily) mean that the 5th-8th best French clubs would be competitive in a slimmed down champions cup. The CC is always going to be really great competition from the semis onwards, but the issue is that there are some pretty poor showings in the earlier rounds. Reducing the number of teams would help a little bit, but we could improve things further by (i) ensuring that the on-paper "worst" teams in the competition have a track record of performing well in the CC, and (ii) by incentivising teams to prioritise the competition. Teams that have a chance to win the whole thing will always be incentivised to do that, but my system would incentivise teams with no chance of making the final to at least try to win a few group stage matches.
"I'm afraid to say"
Its christmas time; there's no need to be afraid!
Go to commentsYou are a very horrible man Ojohn. Brain injury perhaps?
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