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Western Force are set to sign former Australian sevens and under-20 centre Bill Meakes, who has been released from his contract with English premiership club Gloucester.
Meakes, 25, will replace Junior Rasolea who is moving to Scottish club Edinburgh. The Force have still not lost hope of retaining his midfield partner Kyle Godwin who has had talks with the Brumbies and Waratahs.
Meakes joined Gloucester’s academy from Randwick in 2014 before signing a professional contract last year.
He played for Australia in the 2011 junior World Cup and in the 2011-12 IRB sevens world series.
Meanwhile, prop Tetera Faulkner will miss the last two games of the year against the Stormers at nib Stadium on Saturday night and the Brumbies in Canberra a week later after damaging an Achilles tendon and being carried from the field after 20 minutes of the heartbreaking 30-29 loss to the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein.
Second-rower Adam Coleman, who was a late withdrawal with a neck problem picked up in his Test debut against England, will be fit for the Stormers clash.
Interim coach Dave Wessels was forced to move Rory Walton from the reserves and Matt Phillips went on to the bench.
Phillips, who is expected to sign for the Force, was called in from the Sydney University club just two weeks ago.
“Matt did a fantastic job,” Wessels said. “He’s done an incredible amount of work to get across all the details of his role. We’re excited to see him grow over the next little while.”
Wessels said his side left itself with too much work after a disappointing first half when it leaked four tries to be 27-10 down at the break.
They missed 17 tackles, were slow to the breakdown allowing the Cheetahs to set their defensive line and often had no answer to the power of their scrum.
“A very poor first half gave us too much to do in the second. A number of things in the first half let us down,” Wessels said.
“We had too many soft moments, too many missed tackles at crucial times that let them get in behind us and a poor execution of our kicking game.
“There is still a lot of fight in this team, to come out at half-time and do what they did was pleasing. They are playing for each other and we will build on that second half.”
Replacement fly-half Peter Grant missed a long-range 80th-minute penalty that would have given the Force the lead and then they put together 23 phases after the siren before coughing up possession.
Two tries from Wallabies winger and man of the match Dane Haylett-Petty put them in striking distance but the Force let a third win of the season slip away.
Haylett-Petty ran for 209m, scored an outstanding individual try in the 50th minute after a quick line-out throw 60m out and crossed from a scrum set play.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/sp...e-sevens-star/
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Originally Posted by James
