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Dwayne Peel on how he would feel if he was 'in Clermont's shoes'

By PA
(Photo by David Davies/PA Images via Getty Images)

Scarlets head coach Dwayne Peel praised his side’s fighting spirit after seeing them snatch victory from the jaws of defeat against Clermont to reach their first European Challenge Cup semi-final. Despite losing centre Irae Simone to a red card in the 24th minute, Clermont looked set to claim a last-four spot for themselves as they recovered from 15-3 down to lead 30-22.

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However, Scarlets refused to give in and snatched a 32-30 win when Ryan Conbeer scored a try with five minutes to go which was superbly converted by Sam Costelow from the touchline. Peel, whose men will host either Glasgow Warriors or Lions in the semi-finals, said: “It’s a massive win as we snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

“On 65 minutes, I thought we were really up against it as we were struggling to cope with their power game. Sam’s kick was fantastic but we showed terrific fight and endeavour to get the job done. But if I was in Clermont’s shoes, I would be very disappointed.

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“It’s a massive competition but it shows how important it was to finish top of the group and gets these home games. It won’t be easy in the semi-finals as Glasgow are in good and Lions are picking up with some good results lately.”

Scarlets were quick out of the blocks to build a 15-3 lead but the dismissal of Simone for a head-high challenge on Leigh Halfpenny seemed to galvanize the French side, who were much the better team until 10 minutes from the end when the home side conjured up a late rally to turn things around.

Scarlets centre Johnny Williams, who continued his recent rich vein of form with an impressive performance and an interception try, said: “It was a very tight game but it was a serious result for us. It was nerve-racking at the end but I always thought it was coming our way and I’m very proud of the performance.

“However I was praying on the halfway line when Sam was kicking so he must have had nerves of steel. We switched off a bit when they had the red card but it soon evened out when we lost two players to the bin pretty quickly. We want to go all the way in the competition and that is certainly the goal.”

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J
JW 2 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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