Edinburgh V Munster

http://edinburghrugby.org/news/18/11/29/news-edinburgh-rotate-squad-munster-test

Head Coach Richard Cockerill has named a reshuffled starting XV for tomorrow night's Guinness PRO14 match against Munster at Irish Independent Park (kick-off 7.35pm) – live on Premier Sports 2.

With several first team regulars injured or being rested following the Autumn Internationals, the team selection sees nine changes from the side that faced Dragons at Rodney Parade last Sunday evening.

Fosroc Scottish Rugby Academy graduate George Taylor is named at outside centre to make his competitive debut for the club, whilst a new-look half-back pairing sees Nathan Fowles and Jaco van der Walt selected in the starting line-up.

Elsewhere, internationalists Tom Brown and Juan Pablo Socino return to action at wing and inside-centre respectively to complete a revamped backline.

In the forward pack, Cockerill fields a fresh front-row trio of Rory Sutherland, David Cherry and Murray McCallum, whilst Lewis Wynne – who featured from the bench against both Scarlets and Dragons – makes his first start for the club in the back-row.

Ahead of the fixture, Head Coach Richard Cockerill, said: “We’ve got a young group again, but part of our development as a squad is that we have got to put people in a position to grow.

“It’s been a tight turnaround with regards to training, but we have prepared as well as we can and we will travel with the mindset to win."

In the back-three, Dougie Fife and Duhan van der Merwe continue at fullback and wing respectively, with Scotland internationalist Brown selected on the opposite flank.

Taylor – who signed his first professional deal in May – is named alongside Socino in midfield, whilst Fowles and Van der Valt start at half-back.

McCallum and Sutherland – both replacements in last weekend’s defeat to Dragons – pack down alongside Cherry in the front-row, with promising locks Jamie Hodgson and Callum Hunter-Hill once again named in the second-row.

The inclusion of Wynne is the only alteration to an otherwise unchanged back-row with Luke Hamilton – who captains the side – and Ally Miller completing the starting line-up.

Elsewhere summer signing, Senitiki Nayalo – who if involved would make his first competitive appearance for the club – and Scotland internationalist Darryl Marfo are named amongst the replacements.



Edinburgh team to face Munster at Irish Independent Park in the Guinness PRO14 on Friday 30 November, kick-off 7.35pm – live on Premier Sports



15. Dougie Fife (117)



14. Tom Brown (115)

13. George Taylor*

12. Juan Pablo Socino (7)

11. Duhan van der Merwe (26)



10. Jaco van der Walt (23)

9. Nathan Fowles (61)



1. Rory Sutherland (69)

2. David Cherry (5)

3. Murray McCallum (45)

4. James Hodgson (3)

5. Callum Hunter-Hill (5)

6. Ally Miller (2)

7. Lewis Wynne (2)

8. Luke Hamilton (9) CAPTAIN



Replacements: 16. Ross Ford (188); 17. Darryl Marfo (10); 18. Pietro Ceccarelli (3); 19. Callum Atkinson (2); 20. Senitiki Nayalo*; 21. Sean Kennedy (65); 22. Jason Baggott* 23. Chris Dean (74)



Unavailable due to injury: Cameron Fenton; Fraser McKenzie; Lewis Carmichael; John Barclay; Magnus Bradbury; Luke Crosbie; Matt Scott; Mark Bennett; Damien Hoyland

Plenty 1st team players in the Munster team - this could be messy. Edinburgh have basically picked our C team given international players unavailable and the 4.5 day turnaround from the last game.


Munster: Mike Haley; Andrew Conway, Chris Farrell, Rory Scannell, Keith Earls; JJ Hanrahan, Conor Murray; Dave Kilcoyne, Niall Scannell, John Ryan; Tadhg Beirne, Billy Holland; Peter O’Mahony (C), Chris Cloete, Arno Botha.

Replacements: Kevin O’Byrne, Jeremy Loughman, Ciaran Parker, Fineen Wycherley, Gavin Coombes, Duncan Williams, Tyler Bleyendaal, Sammy Arnold.

Who in the name of smeg are David Cherry and James Hodgson?

George Carlin wrote:Who in the name of smeg are David Cherry and James Hodgson?

Dave Cherry used to play for London Scottish, I remember him playing there when I had a season ticket.

He has picked Cherry over Ford, which might show you where he is in the pecking order just now.

Are they going to renew his contract? He looks like he is running on empty a bit this season.

Jamie Hodgson is an academy player and is still in the under 20s.

You haven't watched the last 3 Edinburgh games have you?? You didn't miss much away to Zebre and Dragons but we did beat Scarlets at home with a lot of these players.

BigGee wrote:He has picked Cherry over Ford, which might show you where he is in the pecking order just now.

Are they going to renew his contract? He looks like he is running on empty a bit this season.

He hasn't looked great, but a lot of it is down to the 4.5 day turnaround I suspect and the fact he's obviously completely written off this game!

RDW_Scotland wrote:Jamie Hodgson is an academy player and is still in the under 20s.

You haven't watched the last 3 Edinburgh games have you?? You didn't miss much away to Zebre and Dragons but we did beat Scarlets at home with a lot of these players.

No, I need to pick my battles at home. I can only watch a handful of full games a month before my wife completely loses her sh!t and makes unreasonable demands like I start going to the gym and talking to the children.

For Munster, its great to see Murray back and getting some games in.

Munster have a very strong side out indeed.

eirebilly wrote:For Munster, its great to see Murray back and getting some games in.

Munster have a very strong side out indeed.

Should basically be a training match for Munster - the team we've put out would struggle to beat anyone in the league never mind near full strength Munster away. Kids in the back 5 and a lad making his pro debut at 13!

George Carlin wrote:

RDW_Scotland wrote:Jamie Hodgson is an academy player and is still in the under 20s.

You haven't watched the last 3 Edinburgh games have you?? You didn't miss much away to Zebre and Dragons but we did beat Scarlets at home with a lot of these players.

No, I need to pick my battles at home. I can only watch a handful of full games a month before my wife completely loses her sh!t and makes unreasonable demands like I start going to the gym and talking to the children.

I'm sure Edinburgh during the international window is at the bottom of your list!

RDW_Scotland wrote:

eirebilly wrote:For Munster, its great to see Murray back and getting some games in.

Munster have a very strong side out indeed.

Should basically be a training match for Munster - the team we've put out would struggle to beat anyone in the league never mind near full strength Munster away. Kids in the back 5 and a lad making his pro debut at 13!

It has the makings of a very long day for Edinburgh that's for sure.

Really hope JJ has a good game at 10. He was my big hope for Munster and Ireland 5 years ago, thought he would set the world on fire.

Lewis Wynne!!! An actual rugby player He might feel out of place in that team.

RDW_Scotland wrote:

George Carlin wrote:

RDW_Scotland wrote:Jamie Hodgson is an academy player and is still in the under 20s.

You haven't watched the last 3 Edinburgh games have you?? You didn't miss much away to Zebre and Dragons but we did beat Scarlets at home with a lot of these players.

No, I need to pick my battles at home. I can only watch a handful of full games a month before my wife completely loses her sh!t and makes unreasonable demands like I start going to the gym and talking to the children.

I'm sure Edinburgh during the international window is at the bottom of your list!

Correct. Not that I didn't appreciate the following Edinburgh scoreline from a few weeks ago: Ayr 29 - 3 Edinburgh Accies.

It wouldn't surprise me if Edinburgh put in a good display - there's literally no expectation on us and this Edinburgh team seems to do well in those scenarios. We're still going to get pumped, but I would't be surprised if we're competitive for a while at least!

Cockers has a strange way of motivating these players - he's basically said in the press today that there's literally no one else to pick and that we're going to lose!

RDW_Scotland wrote:It wouldn't surprise me if Edinburgh put in a good display - there's literally no expectation on us and this Edinburgh team seems to do well in those scenarios. We're still going to get pumped, but I would't be surprised if we're competitive for a while at least!

Cockers has a strange way of motivating these players - he's basically said in the press today that there's literally no one else to pick and that we're going to lose!

Did you watch the dragons game?  Or actually any away game this season?  & lastly you are familiar with Fowles right?

We were good against Ospreys and Ulster away.....should have beaten both!

Ok, let me just update this slightly;

"Did you watch the dragons game?  Or actually any away game this season?  & lastly you are familiar with Fowles right?"

Still works.

I like your optimism RDW, but I just can't see anything other than a total horsing. With that said I think we might be moderately more attacking with Jaco in the team rather than Hickey, but sadly I don't think that will be enough

I hope we just throw all the shackles off and go uber attacking - we're not going to get anywhere by the horrendous pick and goes and one out passes.

I'd take losing 60-28 if it means getting a BP!

I think there is slightly more of a chance of this, as Jaco does seem to like to play a more attacking running game, and I would expect Duhan to see a bit more of the ball than he's had of late.

With that said we still have Fowles and I have no idea what Taylor is like.

I just hope it's not embarrassing, we're going to have a tough day at the lineout and breakdown given our lack of experience in those positions and Munsters experience there

Are any of you luvvies watching this or are you all behind the couch?

As expected Munster building a healthy lead. It's frustrating our mistakes are letting them in though - Munster aren't having to work hard to get possession.

I might turn over after half time...

This is a fecking bloodbath, as predicted. The final score isn’t going to be pretty

Anyone know what the record for the biggest win is in the pro12/14?

EWT Spoons wrote:Anyone know what the record win is in the pro12/14?

Give it another 40 minutes and we’ll be able to tell you

EWT Spoons wrote:Anyone know what the record win is in the pro12/14?

Suspect it will be Leinster giving someone an absolute battering but I do recall Glasgow pumping Dragons by 57 clear points at the Dave in 2013.

Yeah that pretty much why I was asking. This is painful

Hopefully Munster let some blokes in the crowd have a run around in the 2nd half.

VDW playing himself out of next week - can't miss these kicks to touch

Much better 2nd half from Edinburgh, we're just lacking the cutting edge to get us over the line. Hamilton and Socino standing up well.

Why are Irish commentators so damn one eyed?
It isn't even a discussion that was a no arms tackle.

Our scrum's gone well this half

Can definitely take a positive that it took them 23 minutes to score this half!

Munster can't contain VDM again - need to give him the ball more!

Come on Nige that was an incredibly soft penalty

Well it's certainly a pumping but nowhere near as bad as it could have been after the 1st half. We really fronted up in the second half, albeit Munster were cruising by then.

Plenty learning for the youngsters that's for sure!

Some positives from the game, but a lot of negatives also

I still don't rate socino defensively, he was largely a revolving door.
Sutherland and Marfo looked ok
Baggot was decent when he came on
Duhan is still as threatening as ever.
Hamilton was pretty good

But just a huge gulf in class overall

Welly wrote: Why are Irish commentators so damn one eyed?
It isn't even a discussion that was a no arms tackle.

Because they aren't Irish. They're hasbins.

EWT Spoons wrote:Some positives from the game, but a lot of negatives also

I still don't rate socino defensively, he was largely a revolving door.
Sutherland and Marfo looked ok
Baggot was decent when he came on
Duhan is still as threatening as ever.
Hamilton was pretty good

But just a huge gulf in class overall

Hamilton really stood up. He's not got the class of our other back rows but has plenty heart! 

Socino really is a liability in defence.

Agree on Hamilton, I wasn't convinced when he first joined us but he really works incredibly hard and generally doesn't do a lot wrong. Like you say maybe not the best backrow but he gives his all.

However I've seen nothing from Socino to justify his involvement so far.

How did Murray play?

Maine man wrote:How did Murray play?

With a lot of neck.

It was a perfect game for Murray to ease back into things - had the easiest of armchair rides! 

He took a few big tackles and seemed to be fine so looking good for him.

Well a predictable hammering for Edinburgh, not much they could do about the power and class of Munster unfortunately, still they did well to steady the ship a little in the second half when it could really have run away from them.

Looking for positives, I though Taylor had a pretty decent debut and definitely looks worthy of another look at in a more competitive game.

Marfo showed that he can still carry the ball pretty well when he came on and did not look out of place. It remains a bit of a mystery as to why he has been sidelined so much this year.

Baggott was half decent off the bench as well. VDW did not have his best game at all, poor kicking all day really and you can see why Hickey is going to start next weekend.

VDM showed that if you give him the ball in any kind of space, he can do something with it.

Unfortunately I thought that both SHs, despite being the more experienced players in the Edinburgh side were awful. That position is really holding Edinburgh back at the moment.

It will have been a good learning experience for some of the young guys, who did not want for effort but it was apretty sobering game for all that.

So, two big obituaries today.
George HW Bush, ex-CIA chief who sold guns and instruments of torture to Saddam Hussein (and cocaine selling central American dictators) and did so much to stabilise the middle east.

And...


The Luvvies Pro 14 campaign.