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Ellis Genge to go head-to-head with England teammate in Bristol return
By Josh Raisey
England loosehead prop Ellis Genge will make his first appearance since the World Cup bronze final when he runs out for Bristol Bears tomorrow night in a West Country derby against Bath at the Rec.
The 28-year-old has been rested since the World Cup, but comes straight back into the starting XV to try and arrest a three-match losing streak. He will go head-to-head with Bath tighthead Will Stuart, who helped form England's starting front row against Argentina the last time Genge played.
The loosehead's England front row partner, tighthead Kyle Sinckler, will start on the bench having made his return to action last week.
Elsewhere in the squad, lock Ed Holmes will make his 100th appearance for the Bears.
Bristol director of rugby Pat Lam, said: “We know what this fixture means to the people of Bristol, so we’re excited to represent them in what is always an entertaining West Country derby.
“Bath have had a great start to the season, and we know the challenge we will face on Friday night at The Rec. Our success there in recent seasons has been built on mindset and teamwork which is what we need to bring.”
Bath XV: 15 Matt Gallagher, 14 Joe Cokanasiga, 13 Ollie Lawrence, 12 Cameron Redpath, 11 Will Muir, 10 Finn Russell, 9 Ben Spencer ©, 1 Beno Obano, 2 Tom Dunn, 3 Will Stuart, 4 Fergus Lee-Warner, 5 Charlie Ewels, 6 Miles Reid, 7 Sam Underhill, 8 Jaco Coetzee
Replacements: 16 Niall Annett, 17 Thomas du Toit, 18 Johannes Jonker, 19 GJ van Velze, 20 Alfie Barbeary, 21 Louis Schreuder, 22 Orlando Bailey, 23 Max Ojomoh
Bristol Bears XV: 15 Rich Lane, 14 Piers O’Conor, 13 Virimi Vakatawa, 12 Benhard Janse van Rensburg, 11 Gabriel Ibitoye, 10 Callum Sheedy, 9 Harry Randall (c); 1 Ellis Genge, 2 Gabriel Oghre, 3 Max Lahiff, 4 Ed Holmes, 5 Joe Batley, 6 James Dun, 7 Harry Thacker, 8 Magnus Bradbury.
Replacements: 16 Will Capon, 17 Jake Woolmore, 18 Kyle Sinckler, 19 Josh Caulfield, 20 Dan Thomas, 21 Kieran Marmion, 22 James Williams, 23 Max Malins.
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Latest Comments
They would improve a lot of such a scheme were allowed though JD, win win :p
Go to commentsI rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.
He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.
The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).
The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.
The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).
It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.
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