Can we be a Drovers podcast instead?

The podcast hosts discuss attending a friend's wedding cake tasting and helping them choose a flavor. They debate the suitability of chocolate and Victoria sponge cakes for a wedding. They also discuss recent rugby games, including Dover's win and Carmarthen Quins' loss. They mention injuries and loaned players. They also briefly mention other rugby games in different leagues. Welcome to Scarlet's Fever, the home of Suspense Central and Westerer is Besterer. Hello and welcome to this week's Scarlet's Fever podcast. Joining me, Big M, as always, is the miraculous, mysterious Cat Boy. How are we doing, Matt? I'm very well, mate, thank you. How are you? I'm all right, I'm good. So tell me, how have you been that weekend? You had a bit of a late one last week. Yeah, so very unlike me, I was out socialising on Saturday night. Normally, I'm sat at home watching all the rugby, but now I was out spending time with other human beings, which I don't do very often. But yeah, I had a nice time, went around, had a bit of dinner, played a few games. So the lovely couple who hosted us are getting married. And one of the things that we did was they had the samples from the bakery for their wedding cake. Oh, nice. So we had five or six different samples and we had to help them choose the flavour for their wedding. It was a big honour. It was a big honour. So I'm trying to remember what they had now. So they had, I think they had Salted Caramel, they had Chocolate, they had Victoria Sponge, they had Lemon, they had this one called Cookie something, and they had Biscoff. So I have to say that the Chocolate one wasn't very good, it was a bit underbaked. Oh, no. But I don't think Chocolate for a wedding cake for me. I don't know. It depends on how many tiers you are for me. I like to spice it up. I like different things on my layers. Ah, I see. I see we didn't say that. So the Biscoff and the Cookie Cream and the Salted Caramel one were pretty much the same. So it came down to between the Victoria and the Lemon cake. Oh, that's a tough choice. And I'm saying the Victoria Sponge was nice, but it's Victoria Sponge. And I'm not sure Victoria Sponge for a wedding. I don't know. It does kick it up a notch. Well, that is true. That is true. It's, I don't know. But we did say something because the couple are, the lady's Turkish and the guy is Russian. But they're getting married here. How did you get involved in this now? Because this is a big turn. Multicultural here in Leamington. Multicultural. Anyway, but they're getting married here. And so we said, look, you might not care about this, but it's very British to go. The Lemon cake is the most sophisticated one. And other people thinking that you're sophisticated is very important in Britain. In England. So we said, go for Lemon cake. I mean, in the end, we all decided that Lemon had won. And for me, it was the best. I don't know. What did you have for yours? Oh, Christ, I can't remember. Don't tell my wife that. Knowing me, I would have had about 50 flavours. No, we had a simple tortilla. I can't remember the flavour. I'm not one of those people that keep a frozen piece in the freezer for the rest of my life. I demolished that cake, and I'm proud to say that. Well, it's a nice breakthrough. I mean, we've got some tough times ahead, so let's start a bit positive. Shall we go through the community? Let's do some community, yes. Tell me how much the Dovers won by this week. Well, as Rob has said, they were up against it. They did travel to Neath, and obviously, noon last week, I think there was a lot of emotion going through me. So obviously, Flanders redone it to null, and Neath took the lead. They started the game on fire. 7-0. Didn't last long, then. 26-10 by half-time, and then 47-10 by the end. So a full second half shut out for the Dovers. A couple of our boys in there, Morgan Jones, Kian Abraham, and Jack Davies, who had that excellent run out in Exeter. So Dovers marching on, and they're the first team to qualify for this year's playoffs. So what more can you ask? Yeah, yeah. Whenever I'm on the pirate rugby pod, we do a rundown of all the club games, and we get to the worst prem, and I'm like, Dovers won again. Moving on. One loss all season. Obviously, no games now this week, because it was an island week, as we will know. Yeah, island week. There's literally no game for us to talk about this weekend coming in. But after that, it's the semi-finals of the cup, so very interesting times. The other game that we're obviously interested in is Carmarthen Quinns, and I'm going to start off by saying we all hope and wish a speedy recovery to former scorer Osher Nott, who took a heavy bang in the first half and needed to be stretched it off. But outside of that, the game had quite a lot of our boys in there. Yes, I think William, Lewis Morgan, and Lucas Sotaro as no-foul, but they also had Carolyn Truithfull-Octor and Ben Williams in there. That was a surprise. It was, but it was a surprise. He and Morgan Jones were the droppers, so it seems as though there's been a lot more conversation over the last few weeks. Yeah, so obviously, they've got the memorandum of understanding now, even though it's kind of been going on for ages. But Quinns put out a tweet saying thank you to all the clubs who loaned us players, and there's quite a few clubs in there as well. Was there something happened, something up with the Quinns? I'm not sure. I mean, they tend to do that quite regularly. There was a few weeks ago when Cremex turned up with 14 men, and they've given a player to the Quinns. So on to the actual game with the Quinns then, and like we just said, they had a pretty significant back row. That injury to North did take up a lot of time, and the first half was rather slow as far from everything that we can see, and it ended nil-nil. So, you know, not very often that we see a half-ended nil-nil, but as we go further down now in these lovely winter weathers, you're going to see another scoreline that you don't see too often. But North's second half picked up. Swansea took the lead. They were going through 5-0 for a while. Quinns finally hit back, took the lead 7-5, and it looked, for all good money, that the tip-cube effect, which is what we are now describing, whatever happens when the Quinns win, was going to be destroyed. He was going to be walking around non-stop thinking, oh no, they don't need me to win anymore. But that wasn't the case. Swansea hit back pretty close to the death, and they bounded out to 12-7 wins, so another loss for the Quinns, unfortunately. But, you know, they've got a couple of weeks now to try and build, and then hopefully they'll have their maestro back after the signations, and they've got a few tough games coming, and they've still got to do the double with the rags, so that's going to be a fun one. We've moved down into the Championship West now. We had a few boys on show, with Newcastle Emlyn, we had Harry Fuller, with Kremit, we had Alfie Evansechi, and with Almanford, Olly Corse picking up his second consecutive start of the season. As far as results go, Brecon won 31-22 at home to Almanford, you know, a hell of a performance from Almanford from where they are. To just keep up with Brecon is outstanding as far as I'm concerned. Kremit lost 21-17 away to Maester Quinns, I really didn't expect that. You know, Kremit has consistently been top half all year round, and it seems as though it's sort of peaked, and on a bit of a downward slide at the minute, hoping that picks up again soon. Then we have Newcastle Emlyn in the highest scoring game of the round, 3-0 over Estalvera. That was absolutely outstanding, a win's a win, nil-nil at half-time just as well. It's better if that three was kicked in like the second minute. I can't tell you when it was, I'll have to scroll through all their Twitters now and see if I can find it, but I know it was the second half, so that's a shame for you. But the big one, the big one, top two, top two of the top three, Slangenic at home to Narba, and 12-3 up Slangenic at half-time. And they're thinking they're going to do it, they're thinking they're going to beat Narba, they're thinking they're going to have a proper run of second, but Narba just keep clawing back. I do not know how they do it, they did it a few weeks ago with Brecon, and they've done it again, they've finished off 18-15 winners. So whoever this coaching team is with Narba, that we are yet to speak to, Ligi, I promised he'd speak to them, but he hasn't got round to it. Whoever it is, they're doing something right, especially at half-time, this is just some unbelievable stuff. We go down into one West then, top of the table Fleffy Wanderers, made the long, long journey to Buryport, and 1-21-9, keeping their hopes of title and promotion alive. Aberystwyth went down 44-18 against Gowertan. Wicklund just edged out 9-12 at home to Highland, and Kidwelly winning 18-9 away to Hendy. Like I said earlier, as it currently stands, Monday the 19th of February, there are no games for this coming Saturday that concern us, so I'm just going to skip all the worthy pictures. We go into one West Central now, Bryn Armon losing 39-18 away to Skivern. Into two West, St. Clair's kept their run for the title going, 24-0 away to Armon Knighted. There's a lot of games in Carmarthen this week, Carmarthen Athletic against Ticroise was postponed. Not a total scout, but a massive performance. Fishguard 6, Lampeter 6. So anyone who's been following two West will know that Lampeter have been right up there this season. Fishguard, Milford, they're pulling up results. These boys get some consistency and they're going to be hard to deal with. So then we go into Milford, they lost 8-15 at home to Mumbles. Temby just scraping through, 13-8 away to Mankeredig. And the last game, Lacha winning 21-10 in Pontyberyn. So quite a few results there that we weren't quite expecting. Three West A, Halford West and Aberaeron was postponed. Neyland won 15-8 away to Flannar Budder. Pembroke Dock Queens went down 12-38 at home to Cardigan. And St. David's won 31-24 at home to Pembroke. Three West B, there's only two games that actually managed to play. Bethos winning 10-3 at home to Frank Gaddog. And Kev Nathan winning 30-17 against Howes New Dock Stars. Oh no. What? New Dock lost? Yeah, they're on a bit of a downward spiral. I don't know why you've done that. Sack the board. Sack the board. Phil Johnson, they're coming for you. The other three games that were meant to happen, Llandudib, Binia, Llanduilo, Trimsaren and Campbell Trigaren were all postponed. The quarter-final in the Division 3 Cup between Llan and Brinkeithin was postponed. We're not too sure when that game is going to be rearranged to. I believe Llan have a, I think it's a West Wales, Clare-Dodd or a District Cup match this Friday come in. Into Division 5 West Central, Pontiet won 15-14 away to Cwmgrach. So that's another big win for them. They've outright tipped them for the title. They let me down massively, but they've been picking up lately and it's always good to get a win away from home. And then Pantybannan going down 14-15 at home to Rickos. So that was another disappointment was for Pantybannan. We go now into the Youth Cup results on the weekend. Let me see, quite a lot of them were postponed. What, why? Because of the weather? Yeah, a lot of them flooded pitches. I might as well start with Camarda. I'll mix it up a little bit. Both Carmarthen Athletic and Carmarthen Quins had played quarter-final matches, both of them postponed. The only match that did go ahead in the played quarter-final was Bondlands losing 15-34 at home to Llandaff. I'll drop down into the roll now in a nice different order. Cadwely lost 38-14 away to Cwmbran. Rhyl won 14-5 at home to Cardiff Quins. The other two games were postponed. And into the Cup now, where every single game went ahead, which was rather surprising. Caerphilly went down 14-21 at home to Penland Unvent. The Finan won 14-7 at home to Pontypridd United. In the Old West clash, Llandilo won 27-13 away to Lampeter. So congratulations to Llandilo and hope you do well in the semi-finals. And the final game, Tonmawr won 22-15 away to Merthyr. And like I've already said, no senior games at all this weekend as far as it stands. Some of those youth cups, quarter-finals, bowl, split, will probably be replayed this weekend. Just waiting for confirmation on those sorts of things. So now that that's out of the way, so have you got any magic numbers from the game this week, Beth? Well, for first we need to talk about the Thunder. Oh, you're on the Thunder first. All right. Yes, I'm the first. So the last game, they won at home against Glasgow. What did they do in this game? They won away against Glasgow. 24 points to 17. Didn't get to watch it again. All of the rugby is all on at the same time at the moment. And if it was on via play, or actually, no, to be fair, this one was on the BBC, I think. It was on IFA. In Scottish teams. In Scottish teams. Okay, my bad. I should have watched it. I apologise. But yeah, two wins in two games for the Thunder. Our next game will be against Lightning, Gwalior. Yes. But it's interesting how they split it up. Yeah. Because obviously, as the table stands, you know, Gwalior have got a game in hand, but there's only one point between Gwalior and Britain. So I'm hoping in some dark corner, that Glasgow manage to pull it out in the next round and we go into this final Britain v Gwalior game at the park with everything to play for. It'd be awesome. And a fitting end to this first season as clubs, essentially. A Celtic challenge. And has the Wales Women's Six Nations squad been announced? The wider training squad has been announced, hasn't it? Yeah, the wider training squad. I think we had about 10 girls, 10 women, 10 ladies from Britain's Thunder go up. So that was, that's massive in itself. So for a team that's literally been around for two, three months, and to have, you know, 10 internationals right off the bat, you can't go wrong. I'm happy with this. I'm happy to see how it progresses. And I'm looking forward to the next season before this one's over. Yeah, me too. I hope we don't have to wait a whole year for the next season. I hope it starts in like, I don't know, September or something, if not earlier. Because like Super Series in Scotland, they do two leagues a year. So, yeah. Well, I hope they probably do. They're probably going to go with a summer one, I would hope. That'd be good. Just because of the way girls rugby works here, it's, they start training in February and they finish around November time. But that's, that's like minis now. The ladies follow the same as the men, September to April, May. But I'm hoping that they get a calendar right on that one and actually give us a fighting chance when it comes to the World Cup. Yeah. Speaking of calendar, we'll come to calendar later. Right. Magic. Shall I do magic numbers now? No, let's do news next. I'm going to save my magic numbers because they're all game related. Normally my magic numbers are random. But this one's actually related to the game. Okay. So, so news is two players have been called up to international duty. Firstly, Alex Craig has finally been called up by Scotland. What took them so long? They're not surprised that they're really, they must have been like scratching their heads. We don't want a boy with the smart in the country. We might have to give him back because by all rights, he should be available for the corner game. But yeah, knowing how the relationship tends to work with us both ways, we'll probably end up leaving him up there unless they say, you know, we're not going to play him, which I can't see why they wouldn't. If he scores the hat-trick against England, we'll let him off. Do you think he's going to get on in his matchday 23 then for England? Well, otherwise he's been called up to hold tackle bags, hasn't he? So that's what we're used to. I don't know. I hope so. Look, he should have been in the Scotland squad from day one. It was a bit of an outrage that he wasn't. So I'm just glad that he's there now. Congratulations, Alex. We're big fans of you on this pod. I'm a hundred percent going on the summer tour wherever you are. Yes. And then other player called up Harry O'Connor. Tighthead started at the weekend. He played for Wales against the Barbarians in the autumn. It was a bit of a last minute call up for them then. But he's in again. And we're delighted. So Gatland has said that he wants a mobile pack. And Harry O'Connor is very much a mobile tighthead. He is, I think, in the 61st percentile for defenders beaten, the tightheads in the URC. So that's not bad. And then I can't remember his other stat. He's really good at offloads as well. He's got more offloads than those tightheads. What do you expect from Scarlett? It's what we do. You interviewed me all season. And if you listened last year, I thought Harry was coming on a lot last season. He had a few injuries which kind of bumped him down a bit. But he's picking back up and he's getting starts again, which is obviously what you need as a young player, especially in the front row. You learn so much from just playing. Analysis only gets you so far. You're facing, taking 800 kilos of pressure on your neck and shoulders. There's only so much you can learn in the classroom, as they say. A lot of people, from what I've seen, have been quite shocked because Gatland didn't go to the Ospreys for one of their tightheads. But you mean the South African ones? Yeah. Funny that. I know. But from all what I can tell you, from what I know of Harry O'Connor and how he plays, this is his third time in a Wales camp. He was picked by Pippa for South Africa to a late call-up, same as Sam Wainwright was at that time. Obviously he's with the Barbarians more recently in November. He's a strong scrummager. He can anchor the scrum. If you've heard me talk about him one year before, you know what I'm going to say. He's got superb body shape and technique going into the scrum, and he does hold it a lot better than most players that we've had. As far as I'm concerned, if people look at a comparison with him and Sam Wainwright, I would say Sam Wainwright's strength is more tackling and carrying, where Harry has got that technical ability with his off-roads and his step with the defenders, but scrum is his bread and butter, and he's progressing really nicely with that. And I expect him to be a mainstay in the years to come. Yeah. Best of luck, Harry. We're delighted for you. Come on, Harry. All I've got to say is happy you can do. Yes. Okay. And then into the next bit of news, which came out today. There's been so much news today. It's been hard to keep up. I know. I mean, I'll never get this much news. We're trying to get it all out in one, but there has been changes afoot in the coaching stuff. So, Scarlets have put out a statement today, as they like to do. They semaphored it, they put it on a carrier pigeon, they did some flags, and then eventually they got around to putting it on the internet. And there has been a shuffle, a reshuffle. So, Dwayne Peel is now going to take over being the lead attack coach. Jared Payne is going to be taking over being the lead defence coach, which is the job that he did prior to coming to the Scarlets. He is also going to be still doing attack coaching and backs coaching. I don't know many clubs where the backs coach is also the defence coach. OK. Yeah, I'll carry on and then we'll discuss it later. So, Albert Vandenberg and Emilia Phillips are both carrying on in their forwards and scrum slash contact skills roles, respectively. And Gareth Williams is no longer going to be working with the first team. He has been offered a role with the academy and junior sides, and he has yet to accept that role. Yeah. So, unlike what the BBC have produced today, he has not been sacked. You know, the big headline, Scarlets sacked Gareth Williams. He hasn't been sacked. He's been taken off of defensive duties and they're looking at putting him somewhere else. Mainly because, as a lot of people would probably agree with, Jared Payne is the superior defensive coach and defence has been a bit of an issue for us this season. So, I can understand the thinking there. So, the comments that we've had, because we asked for people's comments on socials about this, and the comments that we've had have all been pretty much the same, which is it's the same people. You know, yes, it's a change, but it's all the same people sharing the same ideas. There's no new ideas coming in. Do you think that's fair? Do you think this is going to result in a significant change, or do you think it's, you know? I think we saw not significant, but a slight change in our mindset in defence against Munster, because we seemed a lot more switched on for, what was it, about 60, 65 minutes. You know, barring our tri-line defence, you know, from the five metre taps, we were pretty impressive compared to what we have been seeing this season. So, if Jarrett has only been in the role since last Monday, which the statement suggests, then I'd say this could be a massive change for us. If he's done that in four days, well, actually three days, because the Thursday would have been the captain's run and he wouldn't have done nothing on the Friday, then that's outstanding. I'd be very much happy to, but we haven't got a choice, but I'm happy to see how this unfolds. The fact with him still carrying on as an assistant with the attack and the backs, that that is a strange one for me, but I think it's all going to come down to what Jarrett wants. So, I'm assuming this means he still wants to keep the attack coach role, so I believe that means we're going to be looking for a new defence coach in the summer, and now, essentially. Yeah, same. So, we think, the reason that we're talking about the monster game is we think that this has been in place for a couple of weeks, maybe, and it's only just been announced now. Yeah, you'd have to say that a change was needed. We'll just see, because it does feel like a compromise and it does feel like they're down a coach. I think that Albert Vandenberg has been getting a lot of the stick that perhaps Emi Phillips maybe should have been getting, because a lot of people think that Vandenberg is the scrum coach and he isn't. To be honest, with the descriptions of the roles, with Emi Phillips being the scrum coach and the contact coach, does that mean Vandenberg is just doing line-outs, or is there bits of it that I just don't know about? No, I mean, as far as, well, my train of thought was always he's here as a forwards coach. Generally, if that means you take on the set-piece as well, you take on the line-out and you take on the scrum, and Emi is the scrum, as he's taken over from, what was his name, the New Zealander of France. Yeah. So I'm assuming that means that Albert is forwards and line-out, but I think he's having said line-out because you don't generally just state that when you say you're a forwards coach. Yeah, so if he's not coaching contacts and he's not coaching scrums, to me that just leaves line-out for him to do. I think by contact, I mean the skills coaching, essentially, the basics that you get with the academy. That is what it is. So do we want to talk about it again? Yeah, I mean, let's hear what other people have been saying first. So we asked for your three-word reactions. I'm going to start with Facebook first. So David's defence coach walk, well, he has, or he's been pushed. He also said no front five. Gareth Williams said try was good. I agree, try was good. We like Gareth. Richard Morgan. Oh, is that Gareth Williams, our former defence coach? His photo appears to be of a lady. If he's a lady, you're very welcome. James Nicholas Rogers left a very long comment, so he's excluded for not being three words. Pev Griffiths says not clinical enough. Phil says another 40 plus points. I mean, can't argue. James Ray says fitness, fitness, fitness. We'll come on to that a bit later. He also left a much longer comment, which you're not bringing it reading out because of rules. Phil says too many mistakes. Warren Thomas says bad basics, badly wrong. Andrew says turned a corner, question mark, exclamation mark. Tristan Williams says peel out, please. Don't know what he's referring to there. Then if we get on to Twitter, we have Si Williams, the author of Welsh will be what went wrong. Special guest on the Welsh language podcast this week. He blew the blower. Yes. Make it stop. Oh, come on, Si. Someone called Rugby Staff and Cat said Joe plus Eddie equals good, making good use of mathematical symbols in place of words. Rugby Staff and Cat. I think that's run by someone called Fiscal, isn't it? It is. That's true. Now, I have to be careful going down from here because on Twitter, we get a lot of interaction from Ospreys and Cardiff fans. So there's in particular, there's two or three Ospreys and Cardiff fans who are in our comments for everything that we post. So it's good to know that you care about this, lads. So I'm going to skip on past a couple here. Karen says what's gone wrong? I think we're a bit late for that one, Karen. Paul says four word comment, so he's missed. Oh, of course. Is is a word. Welsh Rugby, Welsh Club Rugby says not good enough. Mike says we're Fatty's leg. What? We're Fatty's leg? No, we are. We're as in we are. Fatty's. So it's someone called Fatty because it's a possessive apostrophe. Fatty's leg. And Fatty's leg is a word. Fatty's leg. And Fatty's leg is capitalised. Wise words, indeed. Rob says fitness coach needed. Ben says subbing lousy mistake. We'll come on to that in a bit. Daffod says same old story. Tom says Stoutwin Jones. Not sure about that. And Ben Ford says lack in depth. So that's what the people thought. Let's just say it wasn't positive. Yeah. Speaking of fitness, so my magic numbers then. So you might think that because of how the scoreline ended, we missed a lot of tackles in this game. Au contraire. So Matthias got 15 out of 15. Swartz, I think. Hang on a minute. No, I'm reading from the wrong place. Try that again. Wainwright, when he came on, got seven out of eight. Leather Barrow got nine out of ten. Dan Davis got 17 out of 17. VFAPT got 11 out of 14. Jared Taylor, who we'll talk about in a minute, got nine out of 10. Lousy got 14 out of 14. Craig got 16 out of 16. Connor got seven out of 10. Swart got 15 out of 15. I don't have Matthias's. But then if I go to the backs, Tommy Lewis got 10 out of 13. Archie Hughes got nine out of nine. Joe Roberts got nine out of 10. Eddie James got eight out of nine. Nicholas got eight out of 11. So there was a lot of tackling that went on. A lot of tackling. I mean, near enough to win the tackles in that game. And if you look at the territory maps, Munster had 42% of their possession in R22. Not in a half, in R22. So basically what's happened is they've gone at us, they've gone at us, they've gone at us. We've been knackered from tackling them all day long. And that's why we fell apart in the last 20. That's my assessment of that game. So two problems for me. Firstly, why are we gifting a team that much territory in R22? Because we did gift it to them with penalties. Like in the first half where we had that shambolic line out where they lifted a guy. Craig sort of rolled over himself, didn't he? And it didn't look right. And then there was a scrum from that and then a penalty from the scrum and then they kicked to a line out and then there's a penalty from the line out and then they kicked to touch and they've gone 90 metres without having to do anything. We just give them 90 metres for free and then they drove over and scored a try. It kills you. It absolutely kills you, that kind of thing. But having said that, our fitness has been a problem all season and it's not getting any better. We can go back to the second part of the actual season after the Stormers game, because you went on a bit of a deep dive on Shane Carney and you came back with some comments from former Ulster fans and it still rings in my head. You said something like, all I can remember is being out and out beating Cape Town and the Stormers running in trying for fun. And if someone goes back and listens to that and it's quoted that right, he's a very happy man. But no, it's a problem we've seen all season. And yeah, against any team, if their fitness is actually up to it, that last 10, 15, 20 is going to punish you. There's no ways around it. And if you go into the last seven, eight minutes with only 14 men because your substitutions went all wrong, that just makes things even worse. So what happened? Were we down to 14? When Leatherbarrow went off, we had no one. Why did he go off? I've no idea. I really don't. I'm assuming it was HIA or something, because there's no other reason that he would go off. No, no, no. Docs are with him. He just ran off on his own. Yeah, someone called him off. So I really don't understand what happened there. Oh, I've gone blank. The New Doc Star player. Harry Thomas. Yeah. So he came on, but he came on in the back row. A hooker on his very first professional game came on in the back row. And he gave a good shout. His first grab, his head was up and he was bouncing around looking. He's fitting right at home there, fair play to the boy. I'm thinking, well, this is well easier. You know, to be fair, the guy who was playing hooker played full 80 swats. Fair play to him for the effort. He did not have a very good game. No, I'll be honest. He looked like a terrified toddler every time the camera panned to him, especially with the light out. He just looked as though he wanted to break into tears. I don't know if that's his normal face for that basketball. Yeah, I think he conceded five of our 16 or 17 turnovers on his own. I mean, I'm not hammering the guy, but he had a bad day at the office. No, he's still a young guy. Like, I think he's over 24. So in terms of front row rugby, that's pretty young, which puts it in more perspective how young Harry Thomas is still 18. But no, we know Swart is only here on a short-term deal until the end of the season. And the supported hooker we've all lined up to come in has just been called into the South Africa wider training squad. So I don't know how that's going to go. I don't think he's going to come here. Oh, no, it's because South Africans are allowed to leave South Africa. They don't have to stay. But you'd be surprised if he's going to the Scarlets right now. I mean, we'll have you. Welcome. Did he have a couple of games this one? You know, when he went on loan from the Chiefs? He did, yes. He did. So there we go. He's already played in the league. He's already a test of the Wales as such. He'll enjoy it a lot more once he crosses the lacquer and realises the sun does shine. But you know, that was actually really promising news. I can remember when Stefan Thomas done his write-up and he's like, oh, this exciting prospect is where you tag every single player that's come into Wales from wherever. It's always highly rated. I always think, maybe he wasn't highly rated. Because Scarlets are signing this player, but everyone reckons he's a bit shit. Like, you know, they're never going to write that, are they? Well, I don't know. It's a Western male. I know this boy coming in might turn out to be a bit of a golden tux, so I am hoping for more there. But if we go back to the fitness aspect, we made some very odd substitutions and timings in this game. The first two were Jared Taylor and Harry O'Connor coming off at half-time. Jared Taylor in particular, a very strange substitution. Yeah. I mean, Harry, if Wales have been involved, which I'm assuming they may have been, and said we don't want him playing a full match, then I can kind of understand it. Messiah's played 60. No, I know. And it's going to come on to Joe Robertson now, but I can kind of understand if that was the reasoning. People give O'Connor a bit of criticism because of the penalties that went against him. But I'm going to challenge everybody to re-watch just the scrums on that game and just his side, because you will see Lachman every single time. His elbow is pointing down. Your elbow needs to be up. He is pulling Harry O'Connor down, and he's doing a tremendous job just to keep that scrum up. And that is the work and why he's been selected for Wales now, to go into the squad, not just the whole tackle bags he bought. But yeah, bringing Jared off at 40 minutes, I really don't understand it. He was having a pretty good game. He was probably our best player the first half. Yet again, the player that spent the least amount of time in training with the Scarlets looks like the best player. You know, we've said that before. I don't know, too many times now. But yeah, he made a good few turnovers. Like you said, his tackle stats are pretty up there. So he did not play it either, which is... Two turnovers. Yeah. Makes me think he must have been injured. I know. Because why, it goes back to the selection. Why start him then, if you're going to take him off in 40 minutes? It just makes a mockery of the selection. And then we can go on further after them, when we had Sam Lousey taken off. He did look happy with that. No, but both Fafita and Lousey, if you remember what they were like at the end of last season, I don't know whether it's new coaches have come in and they've got their own bright ideas. I would strongly encourage Jared Payne or whoever it is to watch highlights of us towards the end of last season. Who was in the middle of everything good that we did? Lousey and Fafita. Lousey got no carries. What? According to rugby pass, his stats also say that Eddie James only had one carry. So that's definitely wrong. But... According to rugby pass, Lousey had no carries. That's... that can't be right. And Tommy Lewis as well, he had five carries, but he was doing more defending than he was attacking. Why aren't we devising plays to get our best players into the game? Again, it comes back to us not having set plays, that we're looking to get these players on the ball doing what they can. Like, Lousey's a better offloader than most second ropes. And RJ Seaman was chucking offloads left, right and centre. Lousey can do that. But we just didn't give him the ball to do it. And, you know, what did you make of Dan Jones's performance? Obviously, it's his first game of the season, 150th cap. Congratulations to him. What do you make of that reflection in hindsight? First competitive game, you know, he did have that run up against Exeter. We spoke about this last week, and the week before, where the Exeter game was concerned. And, was it? Cowan, he said exactly the same. Tens need minutes in the seat. They need to be playing regular to, you know, to get up to this standard. Yes, there are some players that don't need to play and come back straight from injury and be amazing, blah, blah, blah. Not everyone is like that, especially at 10. So, to not pick Tithcombe when we know what he's done for us, when he hasn't been on the pitch. He's earned a spot in the starting team. He has. He's more than earned it. So, that was rather bewildering. I think he didn't cover himself in goalie. He didn't do a great deal wrong, but he didn't do a great deal right either. So, you know, well done, 350F. You've been a great saviour to the club. My kids went to model school, same as you. Love seeing your photo with your Welsh under-20s cap. But, you know, we can't be selected into staff if Tithcombe is fit. He needs to be given that opportunity. And Tithcombe had an immediate impact when he came on. We immediately had more shape. I know he made a couple of mistakes. He got charged down and he threw a pass to no one, but it was one of those passes to no one where if it goes to hand, it could have been a line break. We know what Tithcombe offers. We've seen him only a handful of times. We've seen him against Leinster at the start. We've seen him in one of the Quinns games against Pontypool. We've seen some highlights from the earlier Quinns games in the season where he was on the winning side. The only man to win a 100% winning record with the Quinns, I believe. Yes. So we know what he can do. And he's a tactical kicker, I believe, is what he is, because in Dario Wenger's spiral bombs to die for. I absolutely love him. Maybe that's it. Because obviously we hate kicking as a team. And Dwayne's gone, well, he kicks, so he's not staying. I hope that's not the reason. Well, I can't think what reason it is. Is it just he's too young, too inexperienced? Well, we've had Ben Williams and Teddy Leatherbower in the team for half the season. Yeah, I just don't get it. I don't get it at this point. And that's what, this is what we're saying, you know, and when you look, because we had this chat with Lee in the group chat, when he looks at that starting 15, and me and you were like, I don't know about this. And Lee's going, it's a good team, man. I'm like, yeah, it is a good team. But it's just the consistency in selection just isn't there. And the logic in selection just isn't there. The logic is the big one. And we go to another substitution. Yes, Evan Jones had a really good game when he came on. But Archie Hughes was on fire. You know, that boy could have played in the back row, and he wouldn't have looked out the place in that game. He was tackling everything. Yeah, and that was against the Knights as well, against Coombs, I believe. So I'm struggling to find what he did wrong to deserve coming off at that time in the game. Could argue we needed to switch things up, but it was only 14-0 at that time. So, still quite early on. Yeah, that's the mad thing about this game, is it's 14-7 on the hour mark. Yeah, it is. Okay. I have to say that Munster's substitutions had the opposite effect. Munster's substitutions, they kicked into top gear, and they just started running. Murray and Calgary had an absolute armchair rise in the final quarter. And I was speaking to Kalan during the game, and even he was like, I'm surprised at how much of an impact our subs have had. It really stepped it up. All right, come on, we've put it off long enough. Okay. All right. Well, let's do Joe Roberts first, but Eddie James equally deserving of praise. Joe Roberts. So we do on Twitter, our little graphics after the games for who was the best performer. I mocked up the Joe Roberts graphic before we put it out, because I knew this, he's going to be the best player on the pitch, and he was. I was speaking to Vujo Zanqua, who used to play for the Blitz box, by the way. And he was saying to me, your 13's good. Why is he not in the Welsh team and ahead of George North? And I'm like, yeah. So I think George North is in there for experience and his partnership with Tompkins and for the lack of ball carriers that Wales have at the moment. I think if there was a different 12, like a Maxwell or Joe Roberts or someone like that playing for Wales or Eddie James, I think Joe Roberts would be in. Joe Roberts is in the form of his life. He had no right to score that try. Every touch that he had in this game was class. No, you literally said to yourself, you made that graphic. You even went back to watch that game over and you couldn't find an error that Joe Roberts made, which just stands out. What we've been saying for the last two, three years, you know, since even before he had his last big injury, he's had two big leg injuries, you know, and he's only 23, 24 years old. So you put that into context and he's still rapid. You know, a slow man would not have made that try. It was a lovely strike move. First phase ball. Well, we as Scarlets like to see it, but we don't see anything like that in normal phase play. Less about that from what Joe Roberts was on fire. He's been probably our strongest player consistently throughout the whole season. And as much as he deserves to be wearing our Wales 13 shirt as well, I'm glad he's not, because he gets sent home to us. Imagine what that would have looked like if he didn't have Joe Roberts. Yeah, I mean, you're Nicholas probably or Fox. Yeah. So, yeah. So Joe Roberts, he can't, he can't be, he can't perform any better at club level. So, well, the only thing he could do is wear one of them maskable suits and then put his shirt on top. I think that would pick him then. Yeah. But let's talk about his centre partner, Eddie James. So this is Eddie James. Fifth start of the season, fourth starts in the URC. What a player this guy is. And I'm stumped when I'm thinking of Eddie James, because he has no right to be as good as he is, or where he is even now. I know I've said previously, I think I've said it last week, he was playing at a 10 for a second. He was, he does, but he, he, he doesn't, he stands in at first receiver. He calls backs moves. He organises shape. He is, he is like another 10 on the pitch. And you think, oh, he's a six foot four inside centre. I know what he's going to be about. He's not about that. He's not that at all. He's a very deceptive player, which we saw for that try. The little clockwork of his arms, pop it straight into Robert's breadbasket. And off he went. And he has moments like that quite regularly. Obviously, they don't always lead to line breaks and tries, but he does lead to line breaks and tries. And I think he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, but he puts people into space and he's got that physical aspect of him. He can crash through. So it holds defenders, which obviously makes that space more widely available. And they are both exceedingly young boys at centres. Like Eddie's 21? 21, is he? I think so. I think I looked it up for previous part. I saw 21, he'll be 22 in August. And Joe Roberts is 23. So we've got a 21 and 23 year old who, by right, one should be starting Wales centre, 100% our starting centre. And Eddie James, who quite frankly, I think he deserves the 12 shirt now or even Johnny Williams. We should be sitting here now going, oh, we need Johnny Williams back. With having a 21 year old inside centre, we should be saying, oh, I can't wait for Johnny Williams to get back. You know, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, you know, being a scarlet about 12 years ago and another 21 year old centre doing something absolutely amazing against England. So we do produce some good 12s here and there. And Eddie James seems to be very much in our mould as Scott Williams was. He's very good with his hands. He can crash ball. And you've got to put on him too. So that, that always makes it. He's got a lovely grubber if and when he chooses. But yeah, it's just, and the way that they play together as well, they, there's something clicking there. There's a spark between them. I'm assuming that they had a couple of years in the senior academy together. And I'm hoping that someone down there thought, well, hang on, these boys are similar age. They both got very high ceiling. They're probably going to be together for a bit. Let's put them together now, see how they go. And I think that may have happened because you can see there's already a partnership there. And I'm just hoping that we get to see a lot more of it instead of the usual, yeah, you played a great game. You deserve a rest. Yeah. Overall, you know, I'm proud of the boys for the first 60, 65 minutes, you know, they wore their heart on the sleeve. They worked their arses off. But the substitution, but yeah, they killed us. And I still can't wrap my head around them. You know, Jared, Archie, Sam, even Joe Roberts going off, which I am thinking is part of the Wales deal because they lost back. But if you know you've got to replace Joe Roberts at 13, why have you got Steph Evans on the bench to come on for him? He's not at 13. Even if Steph Evans came on and you shifted Joe and Nicholas inside, I can understand that. Why are we trying to make Steph into a 13? He had a couple of runs last season. He looked okay, but he doesn't have the pace or the defensive mindset to be that player at this stage of his career. I didn't even realise that we'd gone down to 14, you know, I still can't figure that out. Commentators, that's the only reason I know. Because when we were on our own try line defending a scrum, we only had two blankets on each side and think, oh, is Harry Thomas going to go on a date now? But no, it was such an odd moment. When do you ever go down to 14, man, off your own? Well, he could have come back on, surely. I can't remember seeing anyone come back on. I mean, they might have. I've got all my hands up and they might have come back on, but I didn't see anyone. Crazy. So you mentioned him very briefly that. Joe and Nicholas, another solid game. He well deserves to be in the 23 moving forward. Into absolutely everything, his stats, he's one of the two players in my grid system for my stats. He's got a number in every grid, which is always a good sign. And it was good to see Jeremy McNicol back as well. Oh, yeah. He makes a difference. Just emotionally, you know, that psychological effect that he has been on that pitch. Yeah, we'll be doing a video of his break at some point during the week as well. I think he beat more defenders in that break than the other players. More defenders in that break than the Ospreys beat in their whole game at the weekend. They didn't need to beat anyone. They had someone to kick the ball. That's all. Yeah, well, that's true. Anyway, so after the game, Peel came out and started talking about patience and taking the pain now and things. You had a bit of a reaction to that, didn't you? Yeah, I couldn't help myself in that moment. I probably should have held myself a bit more back, but no, I'm kind of fed up now. You're two and a half, three years into a project and you're saying we need patience now. Patience was the first 12, 18 months. And yes, we did see encouraging signs, you know, last year at the start, you know, January through to the May. We saw some encouraging signs, but then we went straight back down to step one. And I'm kind of fed up, if I'm honest. You know, we spoke during the game about how the defensive structure looks different or how it seems as though these boys are actually playing a bit more. And that's obvious to see. And so we've made a change there. They've identified there was something going wrong and they've made a change. They've had two and a half, three years now with Peel, apparently rewarded him with a new three-year contract. I don't know if it's a three-year extension from the end of this season or whatever the actual details are of that. They won't come out and say it. We did ask John Daniels back in our little interview with him. That didn't go down as well as we'd hoped. He did not give an answer. But I don't understand what's going on there. I mean, we've got coaches who are either not up to the task or just not pulling their finger out. Like we've already mentioned our conditioning coach who's had this sort of replication follow him. We spoke about our old defense coach who's now been removed from post. Still on the payroll, but removed from post. And a head coach that is asking for patience when he's had long enough. I can firmly say that this is now a Dwayne Peel fight. Well, that's the thing, isn't it? You can't say he's not been backed. You can't say that the board haven't backed him. They've come out and verbally said, no, he's our guy. They've let him bring in the assistant coaches that he wants and they've given him a ton of new players. We haven't got any money. We've made multiple in-season signings from abroad, non-Welsh qualified players. We haven't gone to Dan Thomas like we have previously. When Jared Taylor popped up, I was thinking, surprised he didn't go for Dan today. We've done it before. But no, that's the sign of the future that I'm hoping for, that we're actually picking up good players and Jared does look a good player. So, no, I really am fed up with him doing it. I mean, we've been the positive podcast recently and there are things that are better and we have been positive about the senses and things and we've obviously got players who we're big fans of. Oh, by the way, I didn't mention Dan Davis had an excellent game as well. His stats were fantastic across the board as well. But there's just the problems that still remain, fitness and lack of a kicking game. They've been there all season. Like, how much time do you need? And the things like wasting games, like wasting the Exeter game and wasting pre-season games and the no logic and the inconsistency in selection, like creating more shared in the starting 15 than there needs to be, not rewarding players who play well with keeping their places. These are the issues that we have spoken about since the first podcast of the season and they've not changed. We're not talking about, oh, he's having a good game. And in fact, the clerk coming in the week after, you know, this is not someone who is guaranteed to play at another level above, you know, these boys have earned their shirt. They've worn it with pride. They've done everyone proud. They've done their club, they've done their country, they've done their region proud. And then they just push to the side, which baffles me. It's my favourite word now talking about pre-selection, baffle. We go back to pre-season and yes, we can understand you want to give everybody a run out. There's no limit on substitutions. Your first game, have a run, give everyone a go. And then even into your second game, maybe pick two 15s, half and a half, or however you want to do it. But you need to have two or three gyms with a consistent 25, 27 players that are going to be playing your league games together ready. And not only did we not do that, we didn't have enough games to do that. Three friendlies does not make a pre-season. Same as this game against Exeter. We've had four weeks without a game up to the month of March. What are we doing? Do we think these boys can just pick up off the floor and run at a hundred miles an hour? It doesn't work that way. People need to stay match fit. And it seems to be a massive, massive inconvenience for them to think about that. Even if there was a case of giving the Ospreys or Cardiff or the Dragons a ring and saying, how about this Thursday or this Friday, you'll come to us, we go to you. They didn't play in the off week. Yeah. We can have a proper, if you don't want an 18 minute time, we have a proper 60 minute match, 30 each way. And we have all leather and tongs at each other just to keep ourselves match fit. And there'd be no harm, no foul done. And it would probably improve our match fitness, no doubt. But obviously avoid us being in a position where we have players literally hobbling around, stretching with cramp in the 70 plus minutes. And not just one player, multiple players. Yeah. Something that Peele has alluded to. Oh, we're getting injuries because we're tired. No, we're getting injuries because we're not fit. The boys aren't tired. They're not tired because they're not getting picked every week. They're getting regular rests. The only players that are getting picked every week is Alex Craig and Ewan Lloyd. They're the only players that get picked every week. I don't know what to say. So just a final stat for you, just on the selection thing. So apart from when we were in South Africa, our fewest selections that we've made, sorry, our fewest 15 game on game changes that we've made was in the Cardiff away game, which was our biggest win of the season. Yes, OK, it was playing against 14 men. We made three first 15 changes for that game. And then since we've been back from South Africa, our next lowest is Claremont away. I can double back on you on that Cardiff game and we only made two 15 changes because Johnny Williams switched from 12 to 13 and that would be the third. So only two new boys came into that 15. Yeah. So there you go. And then for the week after that away to Castro, we made 11 changes and we got thumped. I mean, apart from the Claremont game and the Cardiff game, the lowest number of changes that we've made to the starting 15 has been six. Seven or six. It was a lucky guess. We've made like our last five games. Where are we? Eight changes, eight changes, four for Claremont, nine changes, 10 changes. Yeah, it's not a lot. The Diospreys, by comparison, they made seven changes in the most recent game. So that's still less than in all but one of our games. And then before that, it's four changes, four changes, three changes, two changes. The key to a winning side is consistency. You pick your core squad. You know what I mean? We know the squad numbers are different now this season. But as far as I'm concerned, when you're breaking down that squad, you've got 35 who should be your main squad. This is your matchday squad that you pick from. 28, 30 of them, that's all you should really be moving around all season unless someone gets injured. You shouldn't want to be using more players unless you're doing like designated refs, which we have done. We saw against the Leicester game where we made wholesale changes and then revert just straight back. But there's no reason for the amount of changes that we're seeing and not even the injuries can back that up. It's the same as Archie having a really good game in his first start in the shirt, which was Claremont. And then Hardy coming in the week after and Archie wasn't even on the bench. So I said at the time privately, if I was Archie, I would have felt like someone just kicked me in the teeth. I just thought my first time starting in a competitive game at night, I played really well and now you're kicking me to the side. Charlie Tickham must be feeling that on steroids. Charlie Tickham's only start has been Leinster away. So how must he feel? Charlie Tickham must be feeling, I've got a coach who's willing to throw me to the wolves and then when I actually play well, when I'm not supposed to, he doesn't pick me. It doesn't make sense. Like you said earlier in the season, we have no kicking game. We don't have a 10 anywhere in our coaching staff. I don't even think we've got a 10 in our academy staff. So it does beggar our belief that, okay, we don't want to play with a kick in 10, but we need to. The game is one on territory. It's not one on running the ball out from your 22 every chance you get. Yes, it's pretty. Yes, sometimes it works and it looks awesome, but that's not how games are won. Games are won on territory and possession more than anything else. And we do not care for either of those. Yeah, you're so right. We don't care about territory, especially at all. Anyway, so we've had a bit of a moan and a whinge there, mate. Is there anything else we need to cover before we get to wrapping it up? No, I think that's it for this week. We've had a little chat on Brisbane as we wanted to. No, we're all good. I think we've covered everything. Okay, mate. All right then. Thank you everyone for listening. Goodbye from me and to you all and we'll see you all again next week. Cheers. Bye. Thank you for listening to the Scarlet's Fever podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Please subscribe, rate and review wherever you listen to us as it really helps us spread the word. You can find us on all the usual social media channels or email us on welshregionalrugbypod at gmail.com. And remember, whatever the question, Rugby is always the answer.