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Top 14 debuts end in defeat for England stars
By Josh Raisey
Toulon's English duo Kyle Sinckler and Lewis Ludlam started their Top 14 careers with a 15-19 defeat to La Rochelle on Sunday at the Stade Marcel-Deflandre.
The pair moved to the three-time European champions over the summer, putting their England careers on hold for the time being.
The round one meeting was a repeat of last year's Top 14 semi-final qualifier, which La Rochelle won at the Stade Mayol.
The visitors went in at the break behind following a half where both halfbacks spent a stint in the sin bin. Dan Biggar was the first to see the yellow card brandished for a cynical dive over a ruck when La Rochelle were camped on their line. The hosts scored their opening try of the match moments after through Tawera Kerr-Barlow.
No sooner had the Welshman returned than his partner Baptiste Serin was departing.
Serin redeemed himself shortly after the break with a perfectly weighted grubber kick for his wing Gael Drean to run onto and give Toulon the lead.
Toulon's advantage only lasted a matter of minutes though, with Ronan O'Gara's side regaining the lead through former South Africa wing Dillyn Leyds, courtesy of a perfectly weighted pass from Sinckler's and Ludlam's former England teammate Jack Nowell.
A third try of the match for La Rochelle through replacement prop Georges-Henri Colombe looked to have put the game out of reach, but a second try of the contest for Drean gave Pierre Mignoni's side a chance of victory. La Rochelle were, however, able to cling on to a 19-15 win, meaning Toulon will return to the Cote d'Azur with a losing bonus point.
Ludlam played the entirety of the match on debut, while Sinckler managed 48 minutes before the entire Toulon front-row unit was replaced. The visitors were still in the lead when the tighthead left the field of play.
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Latest Comments
Yeah I actually think it was Havili that took it off him. Not bad himself, but on the advice of Razor, who didn't even pursue it and use Havili on a split bench as 10 cover?
One huge cluster#$@% but I think you could be right, I liked O'Connor when he won at the Reds and I've just got a funny feeling he's going to dominate Super Rugby, kinda like how Cooper came back to the Wallabies as an experienced head and spat out South Africa. I think James could do the same with the Blues and other Aus sides. I'd really love Rivez to get a lot of minutes though.
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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