NECESSARY ROTATION

While watching the Dragons defeat Munster on Sunday afternoon, I was perusing through Twitter when I came across two tweets from Sunday Times journalist Stephen Jones.

The first read:

“Dragons/Munster unspectacular yet compelling considering how weakened the teams are. But Pro12 needs full sides blasting each other, weekly.”

Quickly followed by:

“This is tempting providence but with Tyler Morgan Jack Dixon and Hallam Amos back @dragonsrugby are good enough to climb the table”

Ah Stephen my friend, were it so easy.

I shall ignore the context that Stephen also appears to have forsaken, in the fact that Munster were well off colour in that game and that the Dragons were the better side, and also ignore the fact that this is a journalist who has spent most of his career flaunting the success of the English game. His knowledge of the PRO12, expert as he may claim, is limited.

In that form I shall address his two tweets in order.

Firstly, I think it is worth pointing out that the Aviva Premiership is not exactly full sides blasting each other weekly either. Saracens, for example, went to Newcastle on Sunday without the likes of Chris Ashton, Owen Farrell, Richard Wigglesworth, Schalk Brits, Alistair Hargreaves and Jacques Burger. Surely the mighty English champions Saracens wouldn’t be rotating, would they? For shame!

This is a season where, due to World Cup commitments, there are 16 consecutive weeks of rugby for PRO12 teams to traverse and no player could play all 16 weekends without facing some sort of burnout by the end. Rotation is a necessity, especially this season of all seasons, and all teams will go through it at some point.

And that leads me on to the second tweet – in the Dragons’ case the likes of Morgan and Amos are already first teamers, but for the likes of Munster’s young guns would they get their chance if it wasn’t for rotation? How much game time do you think the likes of Jordan Coghlan, Rory Scannell and David Johnston would have received this season already if it wasn’t for the World Cup and the policy of rotation?

In fact, as the time has gone on I’m warming to the policy of rotation.

Kyle McCall epitomises the benefits of rotation – drafted in due to the absences of Callum Black and Andrew Warwick against the Dragons at the start of November, McCall has taken his chance with both hands and has gone from strength to strength with his man of the match performance against Edinburgh last Friday his best game for Ulster so far. In fact, his meteoric rise is more than likely going to see him start against Toulouse on Friday night, a just reward for several great turnouts in a white shirt.

Same goes for Josh van der Flier down in Leinster. Amongst a raft of brilliant back row talent, van der Flier has been rotated into the squad and has excelled on the openside, a position that Leinster have struggled in a bit with the loss of Sean O’Brien to injury. If Leo Cullen moves Jordi Murphy to his proper position of 6/8 and focuses on putting van der Flier as O’Brien’s immediate back up then there is huge potential for him.

But this is the only way to go for the Celtic sides when you look at how they are struggling in Europe – we can’t compete with the immense strength in depth of the likes of Toulon (whose inside centre options are Ma’a Nonu, Matt Giteau and Maxime Mermoz to make a point) so giving these young players a chance is the only way that we might someday be able to compete with the mass spending of the English and French.

So there you go Stephen. Maybe the PRO12 isn’t two full teams going hell for leather at each other every week, but the policy of rotation that we’re all having to adapt is working wonders for most sides in the long term. I’m sure McCall, van der Flier and many others will be thankful for their chances, and having these players at their disposal will undoubtedly be beneficial for the provinces in years to come.

And one other thing to remember Stephen: the Premiership isn’t exactly flawless either.