'We got a couple of offers, and one was pretty close' - The reason that kept Aaron Smith from moving to Japan

But as you mentioned it, I do recall the turnaround in bristols fortunes that season midway through so I had a look at the teams for that game and bears had around half a team on the pitch and a few more on the bench. I don’t know the crusaders well enough to have a decent view on their strength but I’m sure you will, so their squad was as follows:

15 Chay Fihaki, 14 Manasa Mataele, 13 Jone Rova, 12 Ryan Crotty, 11 Macca Springer, 10 Rivez Reihana, 9 Willi Heinz (c), 8 Christian Lio-Willie, 7 Corey Kellow, 6 Dominic Gardiner, 5 Jamie Hannah, 4 Quinten Strange, 3 Seb Calder, 2 George Bell, 1 Kershawl Sykes-Martin.Replacements: 16 Ioane Moananu, 17 George Bower, 18 Ryan Coxon, 19 Antonio Shalfoon, 20 Fletcher Anderson, 21 Noah Hotham, 22 Taha Kemara, 23 Levi Aumua, 24 Taine Robinson, 25 Jack Gray, 26 Gus Brown

that said, some of the worries people have over ireland are missplaced. They had a great 2024, started 2025 by beating England - a more impressive feat in retrospect than most realised at the time, and their age profile isn’t as bad as often implied.

I think that’s what were seeing now. So not me, I’d actually want him to be showing the potential in 2027, see a few facets all put together. That’s a huge ask of course. Like your balance more though.

So getting back on topic, why did you choose Ardie?

I don’t think Ned does enough justice to the benefits of Kirifi’s low center of gravity in this article, and I’m not just saying that because he’s starting to develop the perfect game for his size. The other aspect in favour of Kirifi is that he’s the one player showing real improvement. All the others, apart from Lakai of course (even Savea despite his best efforts), are going backwards.

That can obviously be put down to ‘form’ within the very small window at the start of the season where main players typical try to build from, but it’s an important factor that we do need to see improvement in contributions from DP, Jacobsen, and Blackadder before they can seriously be considered. So with that sad, the options right now are actually very narrow (as outlined in the recommendations in this article), but of course we should expect at least 2 of those other 3 to be putting their hands up too.

There is no Billy Harmon this year, but his replacement is one other player who has good stats this year, and also a lot of extra promise to come, Veveni Lasaqa. He’s having to overtake a couple of last years other stars, Withy and Renton, in terms of the Highlanders mix, to get a starting spot and some minutes under his belt to really show what he’s got, but I think theres much more to see yet. There are of course a bunch of other names worth mentioning, Withy himself not the least amongst them for the future, but Lasaqa is one that I can see taking the comp by storm in the sort of fashion that Sititi did.

But along the lines of the topic used, I really see Sititi as being a 7 as well. With Savea and Lasaka he has that perfect mix of body strength, still a low center of gravity, but also enough muscle to foot it with sides that have 1.96/110kg flanks. While he has talent to burn, one would also not be wrong to expect a dip in performance, even without that, for the purpose of development and long term planning, I’d expected Wallace to fit the impact role more than the 80min man for the All Blacks this year, and the most likely person I can see him replacing on the regular, is Ardie Savea. So that would likely mean time at 7 or 8.

While it’s not necessarily the thing I’d do, that could work well with Savea transitioning to the impact role (both because hes likely to need less minutes as he gets older, and because theres hopefully good depth overtaking him), and Wallace to a starting position again. Of course the troublesome position, since Read started to lose form before RWC 19’, is that number 8 spot which Ardie had been asked to fill, and now which he is only really relieved from because of Sititi’s immergence. Wallace to me only answers so many of those questions by being used at 8 because of how exceptionally he played on both sides of the ball last year. So what if there is a drop, or he is just given a different plan than being overplayed by Razor (like he was last year to his detriment)? Well from what I’ve seen this year, Hoskins Sotutu is showing he’s ready to take the jersey back again and make it his. I’m really excited by his impact and intensity in his allround game he’s had a chance to show this year, and I’m confident it’s going to continue/show, even to the point the Blues win this weekend.

So what does that mean? I can see the best balanced backrow as being Ardie at 7, Sotutu at 8, and Barret at 6, with Sititi on the bench. As a 7 back up I’d currently go with Kirifi, but expect DP, as the starter and, I’d imagine, the number 1 7 before he got injured last year and never came back, to make himself the preferred next goto 7 this year after Ardie (and maybe actually the best specialist 7, but it just not being enough to give him the primary role).

State OO is exactly that whereas the Reds v Tahs includes players from either state in the respective team. It could be said that the QRL manipulated the state boundaries to nab a couple of players who became league legends

“there are some worrying indications Queensland’s opponents now know exactly what to expect,”

Everyone knew what Alfie & Wally were going to do and still NSW struggled.This Reds /Tahs game will be a grind until the last 15mins IMO and the respective benches will play a big role.

Looking forward to this one and a good lead into the 6NS