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Giant Wallaby Coleman set for London Irish home debut

Adam Coleman confronts the All Blacks

Giant Wallaby secondrow Adam Coleman is set for his home debut for London Irish to play Bath Rugby in round 6 of the Gallagher Premiership.

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London Irish director of rugby Declan Kidney has named his team to play and 6 foot 8 inch, 122kg lock Coleman will make his first Premiership start in front of a home crowd at the Madejski Stadium.

Danny Hobbs-Awoyemi, Saia Fainga’a and Ollie Hoskins make up the front row with Ruan Botha and Adam Coleman in the second row. Steve Mafi and Blair Cowan are the flankers, with Cowan captaining the side. Albert Tuisue continues at number 8.

Ben Meehan and Stephen Myler are scrum half and fly half respectively, with Terrence Hepetema and Tom Stephenson combining in the midfield. Ollie Hassell-Collins, Curtis Rona and Paddy Jackson make up the back three.

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London Irish director of rugby, Declan Kidney said: “It will be great to play in front our home supporters again in what I’m sure will be a tough match on Sunday.”

Bath Rugby make 10 changes to the starting line-up following the Heineken Champions Cup defeat to Clermont Auvergne, as the Blue, Black and White return to Gallagher Premiership action.

Adam Coleman

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Anthony Watson returns to the starting line-up following an injury, picked up in the Heineken Champions Cup match against Harlequins in November, whilst Semesa Rokoduguni also joins his fellow England international on the wide channels. Tom Homer retains his place at full-back.

Jonathan Joseph returns to the fold and joins Jamie Roberts in midfield, with Will Chudley and Rhys Priestland returning to create a new half-back partnership.

Beno Obano, Tom Dunn and Will Stuart come into the front row, whilst McNally joins Elliott Stooke, who will make his 100th Club appearance, at second row.

Tom Ellis shuffles to 6 with the returning Sam Underhill, who comes into the back row at blindeside to replace Mike Williams whilst Josh Bayliss retains his spot at No.8.

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London Irish Team:

15. Paddy Jackson, 14. Curtis Rona, 13. Tom Stephenson, 12. Terrence Hepetema, 11. Ollie Hassell-Collins, 10. Stephen Myler, 9. Ben Meehan, 1. Danny Hobbs-Awoyemi, 2. Saia Fainga’a 3. Olle Hoskins, 4. Ruan Botha, 5. Adam Coleman, 6. Steve Mafi, 7. Blair Cowan ©; 8. Albert Tuisue

Replacements:

16. Motu Matu’u, 17. Allan Dell, 18, Lovejoy Chawatama, 19. Franco van der Merwe, 20. Matt Rogerson, 21. Nick Phipps, 22. Tom Fowlie, 23. James Stokes

Bath team:

15. Tom Homer, 14. Semesa Rokoduguni, 13. Jonathan Joseph, 12. Jamie Roberts, 11. Anthony Watson, 10. Rhys Priestland (C), 9. Will Chudley, 1. Beno Obano, 2. Tom Dunn, 3. Will Stuart, 4. Josh McNally, 5. Elliott Stooke, 6. Tom Ellis, 7. Sam Underhill, 8. Josh Bayliss

Replacements:

16. Jack Walker, 17. Lewis Boyce, 18. Christian Judge, 19. Matt Garvey, 20. Rhys Davies, 21. Chris Cook, 22. Freddie Burns, 23. Aled Brew

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J
JW 29 minutes 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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