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'Oddly, I just sat down with Adam now talking it through'
By Liam Heagney
Dean Richards turned up late to his already rearranged Newcastle media briefing on Thursday due to his need to chew the fat with Adam Radwan after the 24-year-old finished training at the club following his week away with England. With the Falcons not having a Gallagher Premiership match last weekend, Radwan and Jamie Blamire were retained by Eddie Jones in the 27 he kept on at Pennyhill before the Guinness Six Nations round two match away to Italy.
Neither Newcastle player made the matchday cut, leaving Radwan still searching for his third cap following try-scoring appearances last year versus Canada and Tonga, and life on the fringes is only made harder by how it is a 300-mile trip every time from the northeast of England to the national team training centre at Pennyhill.
“It must be really difficult for them,” admitted Richards about the current England experience for Radwan and Blamire, being part of the wider squad but falling short when it comes to matchday 23 selection.
“Having done it for a number of tears myself I sort of understand the pressures on the boys from that perspective and knowing a lot of boys who have done it, and it’s not an easy travel from here as well as you are aware, so it is not quite as straightforward as for other people. We monitor it, we check to see how they are and it does have an impact.”
Radwan will return to club action in this Sunday’s home Premiership match versus Exeter and Richards spend time on Thursday talking through the England feedback that his speedy winger had received.
“Oddly I just sat down with Adam now talking it through and Eddie was very happy with Adam in certain areas and has given us some pointers which would be a little closer to ours than they have been over the years, so we are all singing off the same hymn sheet and he is getting the right advice.”
What is that advice? “It’s generally just about him as a rugby player improving certain skill sets and that’s it. We all acknowledge he has got incredible pace and it’s about being involved more both in attack and defence and the more that he is the more tries that he will score and the more impacts on the game he will have.”
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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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