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Penaud to debut for much-changed France, Mapoe replaces Kriel for Boks
By Christopher Devine
Damian Penaud is set to make his international debut on Saturday after France coach Guy Noves rung the changes for the second Test with South Africa in Durban.
A France side missing representatives from Top 14 finalists Clermont Auvergne and Toulon went down 37-14 to the Springboks in Pretoria last weekend.
Skipper Guilhem Guirado is among those to return in a starting XV showing eight alterations, while Clermont centre Penaud - the son of former France fly-half Alain Penaud - will wear the number 13 shirt.
Halves Baptiste Serin and Francois Trinh-Duc, full-back Scott Spedding and forwards Kevin Gourdon, Yoann Maestri and Rabah Slimani are the other players to have been brought in.
South Africa have predictably kept faith with the players who performed so admirably last weekend.
The only change to the Boks side is enforced, with Lionel Mapoe replacing Jesse Kriel, who took a blow to the head in the first Test.
Head coach Allister Coetzee said: "Jan Serfontein had a very good match at inside centre in Pretoria and we wanted a specialist at number 13 as replacement for Jesse, so Mapoe is a logical choice. It also means we're preventing making two changes to the team."
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Latest Comments
Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
Go to commentsYou always get idiots who go overboard. What else is new? I ignore them. Why bother?
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