Director of Rugby Alan Solomons spoke to the media today ahead of Saturday’s European Rugby Challenge Cup opener against Pau at the Stade du Hameau.
Here’s what Alan had to say:
On the change of competition
- It’s probably a good time to have a little bit of a different focus.
- We want all our squad to be playing rugby. With no Premiership Rugby Cup or Shield competitions this season and no Championship or National Leagues rugby yet for players to go out on loan this is an opportunity for some of those who haven’t yet had opportunities to show what they can do.
On facing Pau
- It’s always a good challenge to go to France and play a Top 14 side.
- Pau have lost a number of matches by very narrow margins this season including against Racing Metro and Toulouse so they are a good side.
- Everyone is buzzing and excited about going over there.
Can we expect a different side to the one that played Bath?
- Yes, because we do need to give opportunities to players that haven’t played yet this season.
- With the way this season has been constructed we are going to be playing 19 back-to-back matches so you need to keep everyone ticking over.
Pau have played 11 matches this season, are they going to be more battle-hardened?
- They have played more matches this season but their 2019/20 season ended in March where we resumed in August and played eight matches to complete our season.
- We gave everyone the opportunity to play in those games and we have had a much shorter pre-season than normal so it is not as though we have not played for a long period.
On the Bath defeat
- We created a number of clear opportunities where we should have scored and didn’t.
- On the other side of the coin Bath scored their second try from a ball that we dropped and their first from a scrum where we were penalised, they kicked to the corner, got another penalty and another and then scored.
- At the end of the game we scored two tries but we also three other opportunities to score and didn’t take them.
How do you reduce the number of errors?
- The lads are good footballers and we have an excellent coaching team who work well together.
- It’s about how we practice and we have a clear way of how we need to practice to improve the situation.
Injuries
- Matt Kvesic should be fit again in the next two to three weeks
- Marco Mama is also two to three weeks away
- Lewis Holsey is still two months away
- Nick Schonert is not too far from returning
- Joe Morris is also close to returning but is unlikely to be ready for this week
- Matt Moulds has been to see the specialist and we are awaiting an update on his foot injury
- Graham Kitchener is progressing well and we hope he might be available for the next bloc of Premiership matches
- Richard Palframan will probably be rested this week
- Perry Humphreys took a knock against Bath and will be out for a week.