The one where it is difficult to be positive - even if you're an Osprey

The WRAP podcast is a rugby podcast in Wales. The hosts discuss their drinks of the week, including a cider, beer, and lemon-lime soda. They also talk about recent coaching changes at the Scarlets and new player signings at the Dragons and Cardiff. Welcome to the WRAP podcast, the place to catch up on all the regional and national rugby in Wales. You can find us on all the usual social media platforms and message us through there if you want, or you can email us at welshregionalrugbypod at gmail.com. That's all the boring stuff out of the way, let's talk rugby. Hello and welcome to this week's edition of the WRAP podcast, me, Lee G, joining me as per usual, Harley, Jamie and James, full crew tonight. Evening gentlemen, how are we? Good evening. Good evening. Hello. So James, just tell everyone, how long ago did you walk through the door from work? At 1803. And we're now at 80, so literally five minutes. James is not a maths teacher. So James has done his prep work for tonight, so he's all good on that. Who wants to go first on drink of the week, James? Let's get into it. Who's going to do drink of the week first? I'll start then. Go on then, Harley. So it's one I've had before, but it was this, of course, and well, I think so. I've gone for the cider, so I've gone for quite a bottle of Ripticler. So it's the Exeter Chiefs Foundation sponsored cider from Stamford Orchards. 5%. It is lovely. I'm not bothered with the wanky bollocks tonight. No wanky bollocks. Because I am shattered. Jamie, any wanky bollocks from you? Yeah, so I got a beer that you'll be familiar with. I've got IPA from Valin Bowl. Ooh! Are you turning? Are you going the other way? Well, beer wise, I hope you mean. This came in Beer Club, so they're based out that way. And speaking of wanky bollocks, I don't know if you know this, but it says, Valin Bowl Brewery are the oldest canners of beer in the world. Did you know that? Yeah, it's a bit like the New Zealand game. They don't mention it very often, you know. Ah, right. But yeah, it's fine. It's good. It's perfectly fine. Sorry, what do you even get? James, I'm assuming that you didn't have enough time to find any wanky bollocks for this evening. No, well, the drink I'm having is refreshingly lemon and lime taste. It's actually some 7-Up. This is the only thing I could find. I did stop in Morrisons really quickly. It's literally on the way to my flat, and I sort of ran through the beer section. I was like, I can't stop and read wanky bollocks this week. But I did have my eye on some Tiny Rebel that I found. This is how I select beer now. I was shopping on the weekend, and I was looking at the beers, and the type of beer and all of that kind of stuff didn't matter. I was just reading the wanky bollocks and imagining your guys' reaction to when I read this out. How are you guys going to react? That's how I choose beer now. So saying that, I'm still on my Christmas. We're in February, and I'm still drinking my Christmas beer. So this one is called Peer Wanger. Yeah. It's a New Zealand beer. Yeah. It's a New Zealand beer, but it's a New Zealand IPA. It's from the Harbour Brewery, right? So I've got genuine wanky bollocks. So Peer Wanger is one of the Harbour Brewery's New Zealand IPA craft ales. Peer is Maori for beer, and wanger is Maori for harbour. So the name simply means harbour beer. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Quintessentially. Now, if you've got the word quintessentially on the side of a beer bottle, you need to give your head a wobble, because that's just fucking arseholes on speed, that is. I don't know. This is Pete Cash. Quintessentially New Zealand, using no less than three types of hops from the land of the long white cow. I can't even say that word. Nelson Shulvin provides strong flavours of lemon, lime and tropical fruits, whilst Pacific Gem supports the fruity profile with distinct berry aromas and slight bitterness. Blended with malt. I was going to say, it sounds very New Zealand, the bitterness. Maris of the extra pale malt. This pale ale is very light in colour, but heavy on delicious and stunning flavours. Kia Ora. I mean, there's wanky bollocks, and then there's proper, full-on wanky bollocks. You know when it says quintessentially New Zealand, does that mean it comes from the offside position into the side of the box? It slipped in from the side when no one was looking. I do like the design on the bottle, though. That's quite cool. It's nice. I just typed in Kia Ora and go into Google Translate, and it translates to, you're a wanker for drinking tea. I think we've got to get hashtag wanky bollocks trending now. Along with hashtag Ironweight. Jamie's going to do a news desk in a second, but before he does, I've got a bit of a confession to make. Last week—well, obviously I wasn't on the pod last week. I meant to say this on the pod last week. I put something on our group chat, just to put it out there and see what's what, and it kind of took off. I put a message on our group chat, and then I had to message Jamie separately, and then I had to message Harley separately. And the message to them went like this. I said, boys, I'm just winding James up about Rhys Henry coming to the Scarletts. Absolutely nothing in it. Completely made up by me. And then I started getting all these messages from everyone going, like, you know that bollocks that you said about Rhys Henry? Yeah, well, James is talking about it on the Ospreys pod, mate. Stuff up. Legit, though. It made sense as a move. I was like, you know what? On the evidence of Friday, fuck me, you need him. I was going to see how long it could go for before you told me to fuck off, but when you said, yeah, that's a good move, that is, I just thought, OK, we'll leave that one go. And, yeah, you ran with it, man. I'm a helper. I know rugby. Can't be helped. Anyway, let's do some genuine news desk. Jamie, all yours, mate. Yeah, so let's start with the Scarletts, then. They've put out a statement today. So, coaching changes down west. They put out a statement saying, Scarletts can confirm changes to the senior coaching group, as of last Monday, the 12th of February. Head coach Duane Peel will lead on attack. And Jared Payne has moved to defence. That's mad, isn't it? Defence coach moving to defence. Fair play. Who would have thought that coming? Whilst also continuing with backs and attack duties. And then they go on to say that Albert Vanderburgh, brackets forwards, and Emma Phillips, scrum and contact area, brackets, will continue with their roles. Garth Williams is considering a role with the Scarletts Academy and development pathways. So, to sum up, then, they've got a defence coach doing the defence and they've dropped Garth Williams off to the senior coaching set-up. So, thoughts, Lee? Yeah, I mean, I think there'll be further moves at the end of the season, if I'm honest. We were expecting those to come out now. I think Albert will terminate his stay with us. And I think Albert and Emma are kind of overlapping on each other too much and it's not really working to either one of them is going to go or both of them is going to go. I can see Jarrod staying as an out-and-out defence coach. But I'm expecting both of those to go. And, yeah, I mean, Garth Williams, as nice a guy as he is, and everyone says he's a genuinely nice guy, what's to do in the academy at the minute? You know, the academy is absolutely on fire. All the issues that were in the academy last year have gone. There's one person left in the academy that needs to go and, by all accounts, he's going at the end of the season as well. So, maybe he steps into that role. But, yeah, I don't know. I think they'd have been better off saying, this is what's going to happen, confirm it at the end of the season. It's good that this has taken effect now. We might see some changes between now and the end of the season, but I think that's the way we've got to treat the rest of the season. Now it's a very long pre-season for next year and I think that's the best way to look at it now. Do you want to know a stat? Not of you, no. Take it to me, I'll pretend it's mine. Well, Scarlett, you can see there's 478 points in 14 games this season. That's an average of 34 a game. Is this one of those... No, this is from BBC Scrum 5, mate. This is BBC Scrum 5. I mean, when you look... I spent most of last week doing our videos, you know, our try lights. I think yours didn't take long, then. I think you'll find that when I did yours, I mean, there are two missing off yours, but nearly all of yours are in close and tight. That wasn't that right. Most of them are intercepts or the other team copies. No, most of yours are in close and tight, which makes the long ones stand out, like the Morgan Morse try stand out. I think there's only about two or three which are long ones. So, most of your tries come from close in set pieces, whereas most of Scarlett's and Cardiff's come from further out and turnover ball and stuff like that. So, yeah. Anyway, going back to Scarlett's, I think it was overdue. Our defence has been shocking, particularly around in close, tight up, the amount of tries that we are leaking around Rucks is just fucking abominable. So, if we can sort that out, actually, our attack is starting to fire again. So, yeah, be happy with that. Good stuff, okay. Let's move on to some signers' news, then, because I was a bit busy on the signing front. So, Dragons have signed Matthew Screech on a permanent deal. So, he was on loan from Cardiff for the past two seasons, but now that move has been made permanent. Not the most exciting signing, that's to be said, but that's just where the Dragons are, unfortunately. And then, speaking of Cardiff, they signed back-fight forward Ben Donnell from Gloucester. That was with immediate effect. Donnell is a former England under-18s and 20s international, so that's a pretty decent pick-up for Cardiff there. Moving on to the Scarletts, they signed the South African back-rower Jared Taylor. As you know, he played on Friday night for the Stormers. That's with immediate effect. And then, in other news I've got today, Scarlett's prop Harry O'Connor, he's been called up to the Wales squad. So, as we know, Wales do have injury concerns at Tight Ed. We know that Liam Brown is out on the road with a shoulder injury, and Archie Griffin is out with a knee injury. He's gone back to Bath. Basically, I think Tom Moffat should have been called up. I think he would have been really good at the injury cover, and he's a good scrummager. But I guess Wales are looking to the future, so I understand why they've called up Harry O'Connor. But, yeah, what are your thoughts on our then? As well, the O'Connor being called up, that's going to deplete the Scarletts a bit further, isn't it? Yeah, so he'll be back with a broken thumb before Friday. He'll be back sitting at home, broken thumb, because whatever he did, he did it against the Ospreys last year, and he's damaged, like, the inside of his thumb or whatever, and it just doesn't seem to repair. So, you know, a lot of that movement is obviously putting the pressure on there. I don't think there would be holes that big. Yeah, but he's a prop. You don't get to see it. You know, he just grabs things and people and just... So, apparently, that's where the issue is. He's got a problem in his hand. And, you know, it's great for him. It's a great experience and all of that, but it just shafts us again. And between that and Alex Crate getting called up for the Scotland squad, I don't know, for fuck's sake, you know, somebody go fuck off to the Ospreys. Somebody tunes somebody to run the Ospreys. It's, yeah, it's going to be a tough couple of weeks. Tough couple of weeks. He's not going to say 23. He has to come back next week, this weekend anyway. So, I mean, Crate, it's not going to affect you that much, really. And to be honest, it seems the less time players spend with your coaching team, the better they are. So I'd keep him away from there as long as possible just to get him to turn up on match day. You boys can all fuck off, you know that? You boys can all fuck off, you know that, don't you? Yeah. These are words I've taken from your co-host, Hugh Griffin, or Catboy, if you know my affectionately name. Yeah. We're all there. We're all in those positions. I mean, apart from the Ospreys, because all their players are either too old or too not Welsh or too broken. Yeah. The Tom Boateng one is weird because he plays a very specific role at the Ospreys, right? In that he is there to scrimmage and inspect rugs. That's all he does. He's not a carrier. He's not a distributor. He's not any of these things. So while I get the call for Wales to call, for the Wales call, because it's, you know, we're lacking scrimmagers, right? We can't just rely on Hazarati. And if Leon Brown doesn't... That's it. We can't rely on Hazarati. Yeah, and if Leon Brown decides he wants to train this week... So I get it. And I'm very much of the opinion that the prop's primary job should be to scrimmage, right? But Tom Boateng is too old. And he doesn't offer enough for Gatland. The only person I could think of who Gatland said, this is your job, was Ian Gough. And he was told, all you're going to do is hit rucks all day. You're not going to carry the ball. It's just you're going to hit rucks very hard. And he did. Thomas Francis, he did the similar thing. Yeah, Thomas Francis did the similar thing. That's it. I don't care what else you do. But Thomas Francis was infinitely more mobile than Tom Boateng. And that's saying something. I'm infinitely more mobile than Tom Boateng. And I look like I'm running in slow-mo when I'm sprinting. I've seen statues that move quicker than Tom Boateng. And I love him. Yeah, I'd have put anyone else other than Harry just because I think he needs time to develop and as much development as he'll get in the Welsh squad. The one thing we're lacking at the start of the minute is a consistent team week on week on week. And any chance we've got of that has just been pulled away. Yeah, going on the age point, because really Gatland's only picking two people really over 30. And that's Gareth Davies, George North and potentially Faletto who he said even if he was fit for the Six Nations he was going to leave. And I think Thomas Francis is also on an emergency leave. People who are very established in the squad already. So I don't think Gatland's going to want to bring in a player who might not make it to that World Cup. Same thing, so I'm going to jump ahead to my stat of the week which is Tommy Shun, four turnovers in a single match which is the joint record with Lorenzo Canone for this season and the first time Cardiff have had four turnovers from one player in a match since Will Boyd. And Boateng, thank you again for that one. I still can't believe you're letting go for Josh McLeod. No, me neither. Again, his face never really fit. Nicky Smith's face never really fit. As good additions as those would objectively be for a lot of Wales' problems right now they're now in that 30 plus bracket. And if Gatland didn't fancy him back then he's not going to fancy him now really no matter how well they play. Anyway, let's just accept that someone else has shafted the Scarlets this week. I'd be more worried that your first and second choice ten are both in the squad. That would annoy me more. And your first and second choice nine I'd say that's more annoying than losing a prop. I'm waiting for Archie Hughes to get called up as cover for something. No, we've lost the fourth type five. Fucking hell lads. Of the four clubs here who would you say had this type five worth going up to international level and it's not Cardiff. It would be the Ospreys. Look how good my boys are. Oh, my boys are amazing. Oh, look how big and big. Oh, look at them run for a back half. If they were that good they'd be in the national team. Your timing's going well. Let's move on James. I don't have any other news, that's it. Unless any of you guys have any news. Ospreys resigned last week. Last week they re-signed Tom Botha. I did say on the pod last week I thought Ospreys were going to lose. So he signed what I understand is a two-year deal. I have heard one-year deal. Harry Deeves has signed a two-year contract in one of the best announcement videos I have ever seen. If you haven't seen it, him and Luke Davis recreated an iconic scene from Gruntwind Down. And who else? Dan Edwards, of course. I understand he's signed a two-year deal as well. That was a nice video. It was a lovely video. Really nice video, nice touch. And Keelan Giles is the last player to sign. Again, another nice video of him scoring a trifle when Arlo is under 16 in the exact same fashion he did for the Ospreys. So, yes, brilliant to see that. I think these two-year deals are what you're going to see most regional players get now. It's time they've been doing that for years. Two years, they don't offer three now. It's a standard, unless they really want to keep someone. They tend to walk longer ones to overseas players, don't they? I think, as well, you don't want to move. As someone who has been living fixed in contracts, you don't want to be pissing about with one year. Especially if you're going to move your whole family. Okey-cokey, so that's all the news for this weekend, James, yeah? Yep, that's it, we're done. Okey-cokey, so let's move on to James's beefing banter then. James, you've had a chance to control yourself, calm yourself, now you've got to wind yourself back up and give us some beefing banter from the weekend, mate. So, my beef this weekend is... Can't have given away... No, it's actually Dan. It's Dan McFarland and his post-match interview after losing to the Ospreys. So, he was interviewed by Clare Thomas, by a player who's fantastic, by the way. A really, really good journalist. And he said this. This was quoted as saying, I'm going to ask him to find out because ultimately those two instances decided the game in Osprey's favour. In what he was referring to, he was referring firstly to an offside, which apparently occurred in the interception that led to the Kieran Williams try. There are only two offsides I can think of that would have been given. One was Harry Deeve's shot up, then trapped back and never got involved in the tackle. And the other one would be Jack Walsh. But the assistant referee's in the best place to see that and it wasn't called. The other one is Tom Stewart, the Ulster hooker and try scorer, on the back of a mole who'd changed his bind and was clearly warned by the referee twice to break off. From that, Osprey's got a scrum in which they got a free kick and went downfield. Jack Walsh puts a grubber in. Jacob Stockdale foolishly guides it out. Then the drop goal happens, so they lose the game. This interview has not gone down well, to put it that way. Mainly with Ulster fans, who have been growing increasingly frustrated with Liverpool filing over the season after a disastrous European campaign. But ultimately, are they all rugby fans? Apart from a student Scarlet supporter putting his two pennants in. I wonder which one that is. But this is not a good look for the game. Not a good look for Ulster, for Irish rugby. Clare Thomas does absolutely fantastically in bringing him back in and saying, well, actually, if you'd got your game wrapped up by 70 minutes, you wouldn't be in their positions. He just comes across as a bit of an arsehole. And it's just a really, really poor interview. Especially after Scotland have complained about the ref for the past two weeks now. This sort of stuff now is creeping into post-match interviews. And it's not great. Especially from the paid professionals. It doesn't matter what we say. We're nobodies. But ultimately, you're a paid professional coach. You cannot be saying stuff like that. He's a man under pressure, isn't he? And it looks like, I don't think he's going to have a job next season because a lot of Ulster fans are turning on him, even before that interview. It's not been a good season for Ulster and I could see him getting the chop at the end of it. I think so, too. Ian Frizzell is sort of the man in the know about Ulster on Twitter, who's a good follow. He was disgusted by that interview and rightly so. I have said that I don't think they'll sack him mid-season. The IRFU generally don't do that. No, end of season, probably. But it will be end of season. Just two things. One, it reminds me of those comments against the ref. It kind of reminds me of when, right at the end of pivot, when he blamed Julian Everton and called for an inexperienced ref for not knowing how to make and recover decisions. Which is just, to me, a sign that the coach knows he's run out. Because he knows now. Because he's spent all season shouting at his players and calling them out on interviews. And clearly he's not going to respond when the players have basically said he just fucked off. So they're pissed off with it. But he was a professional prop. How does he not know how a moor works? He's lucky it was only a scrum for an accidental obstruction, not an actual obstruction, because Tom Stewart clearly comes up and then goes back into a moor. I mean, you could call that as a penalty obstruction as well. If the ref was being a big dick about it. Come on, if you're going to pick up on any shit like that, don't pick the clearly obvious one where he was given several chances. Tom Stewart's a professional hooker. He should know how to stay bound into a moor. Particularly when he's scored all of Ulster's troys this season. And, you know, there's... Ospreys were down to 13 at one point. And, you know, you can't say it was the ref's fault when you gave away one less penalty than us. And we were down to 13. So, look, that... They scored two moor troys and that was it. And to be fair, even their moor wasn't working particularly well. But the Ospreys were actually pretty decent with it. But then they could have kicked for points more. And that's a coaching strategy thing. In a way, it's a game where you need to win, not necessarily a bonus point. Yeah, I agree. Very quickly, I do have another beef, actually. It's the commentary team for that game. Oh, fuck it now. Martin Gilroy and I really loved it anyway. But Craig Gilroy and Gareth Anscombe, the two most miserable bastards, and, oh my God, Gareth Anscombe clearly hates the Ospreys. And it's hilarious. Craig Gilroy, his hatred for Dan McFarland is unbelievable. I absolutely fucking love it. Can I just say, just in case anyone's listening with lawyers and stuff like that, James is just winding you up. James doesn't mean it. He's just giving an opinion. He's not stating facts, and it's just an opinion. If you're going to sue anyone, sue James. I'll go as far as saying that commentary actually made an already bad game worse. Because I had to listen to the shit as well as watch it. I agree. You could have done much more about that. The thing that winds me up with commentary, in the Scarlet's game, is that we had two Cardiff boys in commentary for the Scarlet's game. We kicked the ball to Manchester, and they secured it. They went into a ruck, and there were no Scarlet's defenders there. We just defended it and went, right, okay. Hoofed it back to us. We hoofed it back to them. They did exactly the same thing again. Four, five men into a caterpillar ruck. Scarlet's didn't defend it. There was nobody in challenging that ruck. They hoofed it back to us, and while they were doing those two rucks, so Richie Rees goes, that's good control, good control from Manchester there. They're showing, clearly a tactic there to protect the ball, and they're going to kick it back down. Comes back to us. We did exactly the same thing. So we took the ball in, we made contact. Once the man gets up, fucks off, we've got four men in the ruck, and we're going to kick it to touch. And Richie Rees goes, that's poor from the Scarlet's. They're not committing any men there. Literally in the space of 30 seconds, from one kick to the next kick, you've just gone, Manchester, that's good, and then Scarlet's, that's poor for doing exactly the same thing. You've got Manchester good in your shit. Irrelevant, mate. If you're going to be a commentator, if you're going to be on a TV show and pretend to be, you're going to put yourself up, you're going to pretend to be neutral, then at least make the effort to not contradict yourself in the same fucking play, 30 seconds apart. It's just, that's the bit uncommentary that pisses me off where they purposely go, you know, and it was why we said we were going to have four of us on here, so that there's not like, we're not going to pretend that we're going to be an All The Wales podcast, but there's going to be three from Cardiff, yeah? There's four of us, different points of view. If you're going to sit there, if you're going to pretend to be neutral, at least make the fucking effort to be neutral on that. Anyway, that's your beef and banter, don't we? I'm done. I'm done. Sorry to leave. God. You can tell it's a decent beer this week as well, because it's actually going down. Somebody almost tried to give me one of those sour beers, Jim, again. It didn't go down very well. It did not go down very well at all. Don't feel like you're missing. You should have taken it. Be grateful you've taken it. It was almost the end of a friendship. Right. Let's move on to the games from the weekend then. We'll go in on a logical order, if you will, so we'll start with the Scarlets. In 60 minutes, we were 14-7 down. We'd fucked up an attack on their line and we'd had two clear opportunities to kick that we'd turned down. I've seen a lot of stuff on social media about dig a hole and bury ourselves and all that kind of stuff. I've got more Cardiff and Ospreys people on our timeline now. We do the three-word thoughts and it's all Ospreys and Cardiff supporters telling us how shit the Scarlets are. The Scarlet supporters are going like, well, we were good for 60 minutes. We were good for 60 minutes. I don't think Sam Lousey's a captain, in all honesty. I thought some of the decisions that we made with him as captain were poor. There were a couple of instances where Dinkie was just losing his shit with him and you've got to do this, you've got to do that. I thought Dinkie, first game back, he played against Exeter, but his first competitive game, 150 appearances for the Scarlets and he had his little boy there and all that kind of stuff. I thought he had a decent enough game, but when it collapsed, it just collapsed in such a big way. You could almost feel it coming because you could see the difference between the first half, where we were competitive, we were stopping them. Some of our defence in the first half was superb. They couldn't take us on up front and they couldn't take us on in the back. They were kicking the ball and we were in the back, so that worked well. When it started falling apart, it just fell apart massively. That comes down to the team spirit and the effort. Are you willing to pull for each other? I just think the spirit in camp at the minute is kicking after kicking after kicking this year. It's really hard to pull yourself together when you're like that. We've all been in teams where that's been the case. As good as you think your team is, for whatever reason, it's just not firing, it's just not working. You're sitting there going, what the fuck? What's happening? When you start going downhill, a couple of your boys will switch off and ultimately they're the boys that will leave at the end of the season and the boys that want to work hard will be the ones left. It's the same old, same old. There were a lot of good points in there. There were a lot of people that put their hand up. Joe Roberts taught George North how to defend at 13. Go and watch the highlights. All the stuff I was saying where he drifts off on a 13. Yes, this is what George North does when George North can't defend at 13. Watch what Joe Roberts, and this is what we're talking about. Joe Roberts will drift off and he will cut the 15 and he will cut the 13 and he stopped four or five clear try scoring opportunities simply by reading the play. He puts himself in a position where they haven't got an opportunity to move the ball. It can't go deep, it can't go wide, it can't go over the top and by the time they've realised it, it's cut out. He had an absolutely superb game. His try was superb. The try was good. I'll give him that one. The try was very good. Joe Roberts and Eddie James I think played together in academy for a season and it just comes from that understanding and that knowledge. He ran a tight angle on his shoulder and if you look, he's run that angle twice before where Eddie hasn't given the ball and he's gone into contact and then when the timing is right, out it comes and it was a clear run in. There were positives to pull from it but then you look at the scoreline and you go out and you pull positives from that but there were positives for the first 60 minutes definitely. I've got a few things from Cat Boy. He wasn't sure if you were going to be on tonight Lee so I'm just going to reiterate a couple of his points and I'll quickly add on my own thoughts. So he pointed out that 42% of the games played in the Scots 22 and that basically every single Scots player made double-figure tackles so it's no wonder they dropped off after 60 because they were fucked. It's not like you really had the bench to bring on because you were losing your back-five-forwards too quickly which is fucking shit. An academy hooker who was meant to come on for 10-15 minutes that hooker and our academy hooker came on for 25 minutes in the back row. That's where we were. And then you had a hooker your starting hooker who I thought was a David Dunn because of the way he was playing. I didn't realise you've had Schwalke for a couple of games. He did not have a good day. He's caught the Welsh line-exer in bug. But I think you're right about Lowsey being captain. Do you reckon Peel just did it because he thought the press is going to spend most of his time talking to Lowsey anyway. Might as well make him captain. The rumour was that Lowsey had signed to go to Southern Hemisphere and was trying to get out of his contract early. That's where the injuries come in. These are rumours. These are unfounded rumours but they're rumours that have come from four or five different people. So his injury was he'd played his required number of games and he wanted to be released and to go and play Southern Hemisphere rugby. And that all seems to have died a death and now he's back playing and then got made captain so everyone's kind of gone like oh, hang on, are we? Is he staying then? You don't make somebody captain if they're going to leave at the end of the season. So it was a little bit confusing as to what was going on with Lowsey. But yeah, he's not captain. As decent of a player as he is and as lovely a chap he's not captain. My actual thoughts on the game I thought that actually was one of the better performances of the season. As bizarre as that sounds. I actually thought it was certainly a huge improvement on the Exeter game. Again, I think Joe Roberts and Eddie James is going to be a special partnership for years to come. Whether or not you can get them both into the Wales squad because it's a cliche and actually when you look at Eddie James he does, he can punch a bit. I think the problem is the only reason Joe Roberts isn't at a place in George North is because we haven't really got a big bastard at 12. And I think it's literally that. I think if Max, like say someone like Max Duane was actually playing regular rugby you'd probably see someone like him at 12 and then you could make space for Joe Roberts. Well we'll talk about Irish selection later so let's move on to the Cardiff game. Harley, you give us your rundown on the Cardiff game, mate. I'll just go back and look at everything other than the Stormers and the Dragons games really. Yet another valiant defeat. I'll be honest, I'm a bit hacked off with saying it to be honest. I mean, I know it's hard at the start of the season we had eight people in the groundskeeper to try and do a scrum practice and we're doing a lot better than we thought then. But I feel if anything we've just stagnated. We've hit this. We're tough to beat but at the same time even though we went down to 14 men really early despite what some of the people on the Cardiff stages were saying was a clear-cut red card we still could have and should have won that game. I'm getting fed up of saying we could have and should have won that game but didn't. It was great to see Rhys Carey do some busting runs but we don't have enough of them. I thought for the five minutes Ben Donald was actually on the pitch before getting a head knock which another one of those head knocks that never gets looked at which is always weird no matter who it is. Frustrating to be honest. I'm getting really sick to death of the bringing pride back into Welsh rugby. I'd much rather have a shitty I'd much rather have a shitty win with a last-minute dropped goal than another feel-good factor. That's what they say on the Cardiff stage a feel-good factor. I said it in my post-match reaction it's great that the cap's getting sold out whether a quarter of the tickets are being given away for free or not. Even a free ticket's going to be hard to give away if it's just going to be narrow defeat after narrow defeat. I don't know if James is going to come on and say I wish I was just getting narrow defeat but it's really frustrating it's hard to just keep up the positive vibes when it pains all the time because our game management is still terrible. And I don't think the Welsh internationals that we've lost would necessarily have made it any better. People are starting to say what I've been saying for about three or four games is that how long can Cardiff keep having this title of we lost but we threw the ball about and some kids came onto the pitch afterwards and had a photo with Mackenzie Martin. That's all well and good but you're not winning games. It's different with the Scarletts and Dragons because there may be a bit more turmoil the feel good factor isn't necessarily there but with Cardiff the feel good factor is there your marketing's brilliant you're selling out games you're getting 5,000 junior kids you sell eight gallons of beer a minute and you've got Barry John's boots you've got all these things but you're not winning and I've said this on the Ospreys pod and I say it every week here as well and now people are starting to get a bit cheesed off with it there's only so many times Jockey who I think is a good coach for you can say we played really well we did all these things right it has to stop but I can't see where it does stop this is my this is your issue and Harley's absolutely spot on maybe with the exception of Thomas I'm not sure because I think it'd still make the same mistake so the big thing for me was the we were 7-3 up with 30 seconds to go and Bevan shakes for a box kick and Thomas has done the exact same thing for Wales and Cardiff I don't think he would've played the extra phase or two to just kick it out and then we end instead of being 7-3 up we're 7-6 up and you know we only lost by two points it's an interesting one but people are finally starting to catch up on what I've been saying for weeks I don't think even me and Colin have been saying this and there are a few other Cardiff fans who've been saying it for a while it's just that co-op's getting larger but your problem is your statistics will show you that if you can get kids in the door to a game kids pretty much don't watch the game to see who wins and loses they just want to shout at people if you can get kids in the door to games before they're 14 their retention rate at 40 is twice as high as if their first game is after 14 I saw a bizarre study on it when I was looking for something else so that's why they're getting that many people in the door that early they're establishing behaviours and it's got nothing to do with the game absolutely nothing to do with the game the retention rate that Cardiff will get out of those kids over the next 5, 10, 15 years will be significantly higher than any if we start going now and giving away to under 16s and under 18s the retention rate on those won't be as high so what Cardiff are doing is right all clubs have done it for a long time if you're one of the kids that runs on at half time and all that kind of stuff you, your family, your club all that kind of stuff you get free tickets if they do the community game in a week you get free tickets and stuff like that the whole point of that is to get them involved in the club and it's genuinely got nothing to do with winning or losing that comes later yeah that comes later when you get to like 18, 20, 22 that's when winning becomes important when you're in that developmental phase the fact that you get to run on the pitch after the game and have your photo taken with somebody that you've seen on the telly the week before that will stick in a kid's head much, much longer than the score yeah I remember when I was seven I trained in a rugby club about five minutes that way with the Japan national team yeah and I remember throwing the ball I couldn't say the name didn't know who they were they gave me a hat they gave me a badge I remember virtually every minute of that 15 minutes because I was I remember more of that than pretty much any of the games that I've been to see since yeah that's the effect that giving those kids an experience will have so don't knock it sorry that's not I was going to say before James goes on this point that's not the bit I'm I don't think it's the bit James is the bit I'm I don't think it's the bit I'm I don't think it's the bit I'm I don't think it's the bit I'm I don't think it's the bit I'm I don't think it's the bit I'm I don't think it's the bit I'm I don't think it's the bit I'm I don't think it's the bit I'm I don't think it's the bit I'm I don't think it's the 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