TOO many changes to the match day 22 are taking away our competitive edge.
I agree that the early stages of this season are about opportunity, building a team and not over working the players but as a fan I also think it is about putting on a performance for 80 minutes.
Just taking into account the senior competitions of the league and B&I Cup we have made an average of eight changes for each game, including 15 changes for our stutter against Moseley at the weekend. That is a massive amount of change preventing partnership development.
There is slightly less wholesale change in the forwards but still set piece must be harder when week in week out you are trying to perform these tasks with different people.
Looking at the 12 games of the season so far I would say it is impossible to determine those players in form let alone our best XV.
Having watched Bristol fail to win promotion last season and having seen them spend more than half of the campaign making wholesale changes throughout the league and cup – and coming away winning neither, I fear that if this continues we will fail to develop a team.
London Welsh demonstrated last season that it is the team, at the end of the day, that wins the league.
Clearly we are developing a squad and in that process we are still winning, but personally I would like to see Dean Ryan select a senior or near first choice XV for the next couple of games.
We have seen what the younger squad members can do, now it is time to see what the senior players can do and build a sense of team and a desire to keep scoring against sides for the whole 80 minutes of every game.
By Phill Mason