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'Like someone had shot him with a gun, you heard the rupture'
By PA
Wayne Pivac, who this Saturday is giving a belated Test debut to Josh Macleod, says Wales forwards Will Rowlands and Dan Lydiate will not return to action any time soon after suffering injuries during the Autumn Nations Series campaign. Lock Rowlands hurt his shoulder, while flanker Lydiate suffered a broken arm during the 20-13 victory over Argentina last weekend.
“They are both seeing specialists,” Wales head coach Pivac said. “They are both out of this series, and they will not be back any time soon. They are both reasonably serious injuries. Obviously, we would like to think they will both be back at some stage during the Six Nations.”
While Rowlands and Lydiate begin the recovery process, Scarlets back row forward Macleod will prepare to make his Wales debut against Georgia on Saturday. It would have happened last year against Six Nations opponents Scotland, but he suffered a ruptured achilles tendon in Wales’ first training session after he was selected.
Pivac added: “Any injury that takes you out of the first opportunity to play for your country is big, isn’t it? For that one [the achilles injury] I was standing about two metres behind him, he just accelerated from a standing start and it was like someone had shot him with a gun. You heard the rupture, so it was a nasty one.
“I remember saying to him, though, before he left the hotel that he should go away with the knowledge that this coaching group had selected him on his merits. I told him, ‘Work hard now and you will be stronger for it. When you come back, provided you are playing well, you will get another opportunity’.
“He has gone away and worked very, very hard on his game, and it is a credit to him and the people around him because it is always medical people that do the unseen work and the strength and conditioning boys that help these guys get back. It is just a pleasure to see him back on the playing field. He is a lovely young guy and he works very, very hard at his game.
“He is a very physical player, and I think the biggest step going from club to international is the physicality required, so it is going to be very interesting to see how that transfers for him.”
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Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
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