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The powerhouse midfield combination Dean Ryan is about to recruit at Dragons

(Photos by Getty Images)

Dean Ryan is reportedly set to bag himself a powerhouse new midfield for next season as the Dragons plot to shake off their long-held status as Wales’ fourth-ranked region. Heading into his second summer at the club, the ex-England international is said to be very busy on the recruitment front, the loss of Cory Hill to Cardiff Blues about to be offset by the speculated arrival of a phalanx of established names.

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Welsh international Ross Moriarty signed a long term deal last month within days of Hill’s departure, giving the club a momentum that has them poised to bring a number of other heavy-hitters to Rodney Parade. No deals have been officially announced by Ryan but Jonah Holmes is apparently heading to Newport having gained release last week from the final year of his contract from Gallagher Premiership Leicester. 

The winger can expect a silver service if the midfield potentially within Ryan’s grasp is now secured. Dragons are said to the front runners to snatch Nick Tompkins, the new Wales international centre who is looking for a one-year loan away from relegated English club Saracens. Tompkins was initially thought to be heading to the Arms Park but Cardiff’s insistence that he agree a two-year switch brought an end to that approach, paving the way for Ryan to accommodate the Premiership and European winner. 

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Re-elected World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont guests on the latest edition of The Rugby Pod

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Re-elected World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont guests on the latest edition of The Rugby Pod

Now comes word via The Rugby Paper that Tompkins could line up in a midfield partnership with Leinster’s Joe Tomane. The 30-year-old, capped 17 times by Australia, is out of contract in Dublin following a two-season stint under Leo Cullen where he was often hampered by in injury and regularly lost out when the Irish province had their Ireland internationals available for the big games. 

A Double-T centre partnership of Tompkins and Tomane would have the ability to electrify Rodney Parade, giving Sam Davies every incentive to play the game wide as the club looks to build on an encouraging first season under Ryan. Dragons won five of their 13 Guinness PRO14 matches and qualified for the quarter-finals of the European Challenge Cup.

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J
JW 38 minutes ago
‘The problem with this year’s Champions Cup? Too many English clubs’

Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.


Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.


So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).


You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.


I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?

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f
fl 3 hours ago
‘The problem with this year’s Champions Cup? Too many English clubs’

"Right, so even if they were the 4 worst teams in Champions Cup, you'd still have them back by default?"

I think (i) this would literally never happen, (ii) it technically couldn't quite happen, given at least 1 team would qualify via the challenge cup, so if the actual worst team in the CC qualified it would have to be because they did really well after being knocked down to the challenge cup.

But the 13th-15th teams could qualify and to be fair I didn't think about this as a possibility. I don't think a team should be able to qualify via the Champions Cup if they finish last in their group.


Overall though I like my idea best because my thinking is, each league should get a few qualification spots, and then the rest of the spots should go to the next best teams who have proven an ability to be competitive in the champions cup. The elite French clubs generally make up the bulk of the semi-final spots, but that doesn't (necessarily) mean that the 5th-8th best French clubs would be competitive in a slimmed down champions cup. The CC is always going to be really great competition from the semis onwards, but the issue is that there are some pretty poor showings in the earlier rounds. Reducing the number of teams would help a little bit, but we could improve things further by (i) ensuring that the on-paper "worst" teams in the competition have a track record of performing well in the CC, and (ii) by incentivising teams to prioritise the competition. Teams that have a chance to win the whole thing will always be incentivised to do that, but my system would incentivise teams with no chance of making the final to at least try to win a few group stage matches.


"I'm afraid to say"

Its christmas time; there's no need to be afraid!

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