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by Gareth Griffiths, South Wales EchoOct 15 2011Add a comment Recommend
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CARDIFF Blues have turned to youth for the start of their LV=Cup campaign against Newcastle Falcons at Kingston Park tonight (6.30pm).
There is also a starting debut for Australian hooker Ryan Tyrrell after the ex-Western Force front-rower linked up with the region following the retirement of Gareth Williams and a knee injury to Rhys Thomas.
“I think it’s important that some of the players that haven’t featured in the first five or six games are given the opportunity to push for the main squad,” said backs coach Gareth Baber, who has also seen the return of hooker Rhys Williams on the replacements bench.
“This is certainly what these two games are about.
“We are ambitious as a group and we want to make sure that we are pushing everybody all the time, and this is the next phase of pushing on.
“It is a young team that we’ve selected, but it’s full of talent as well and that’s what we want to see as coaches.
“In the summer we invited players who are in the academy, 18 and 19-year-olds, to train with us.”
“They’ve impressed not only the coaching and conditioning staff but the senior players as well.
“Players like Cory Allen, Rhys Patchell, Rhys Downes and Harry Robinson, although he doesn’t play this weekend, are pushing for first team places.
“It is exciting. We want to see how far they’ve come and it gives us a good idea of where we think they are going to end up.
“Newcastle have had a tough time of it over the last few weeks as obviously the Aviva is a very competitive league.”
“I imagine they will want to create some momentum and that can happen in tournaments like this, where you can go on a bit of a run, and then it lends itself to your league campaign.”
The Blues take a break from a mixed opening bout of RaboDirect Pro12 matches with three defeats and three victories, the last of which was in Aironi last weekend which put the region in fourth place.
“Certain aspects of our performance in Aironi were pleasing, in terms of putting pressure on them when we had ball in hand,” added Baber.
“We’d looked at areas to improve and executed them well in the first half.
“Obviously we were a bit disappointed that we let the tries in.”
“We wanted to keep out the opposition and unfortunately we put ourselves in a situation where we’ve given them four tries.
“Overall, it’s pretty obvious that the Glasgow game was one where we targeted getting a win and we failed badly.
“That was our biggest failure in six matches. Had we got those points we’d be in the top two or three.”
“We find ourselves in fourth place, which isn’t bad when you take into account the players we have to come back into system.
“There have been aspects that have been frustrating but there have been some real positives come out of the first six weeks. “It’s our aim to keep that going.”
Blues: D Fish; R Mustoe O Williams C Allen, A Thomas; R Patchell, R Downes; N Trevett, R Tyrrell, R Harford, C Hill, J Downes (capt), E Jenkins, L Hamilton, T Young. Reps: R Williams, J Corsi, T Davies, M Screech, R Shellard, L Jones, L Williams, R Smith.
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