Choices not easy for Canty rugby selectors

Press, 15 September 1977, Page 28

Choices not easy for Canty rugby selectors

By

KEVIN McMENAMIN

Whatever their choice, the Canterbury rugby selectors will have to leave a good deal of talent on the sidelines for the team’s game against Taranaki at Lancaster Park next Wednesday.

If Canterbury beats Taranaki, it will win the Radio New Zealand title. If it ioses, it will still be able to win or share the title, depending on the result of its came against Auckland the following Saturday and how Taranaki and Counties, the onlv other teams still in contention, fare in their final) games. If Taranaki loses onlv one of its four remaining matches. Canterbury loses both its two, and Counties wins i’s two remaining) games then a three-way tie will result. However, the odds are verv much in Canterbury’s favour. The fact that Taranaki plays Manawatu on Saturday in what is also a Ranfurlv Shield challenge could help Canterbury. Whatever the outcome. Taranaki could be 111-prepared for a hard game just four davs later.

All the same, Canterbury cannot afford to take Taranaki lightlv and will almost certainly field its strongest team. It will be interesting, therefore, to see what the selectors (Messrs Stan Hill and Gerald Wilson) consider their strongest team at present. With a string of eight successive wins in the national championship. any critics Messrs Hill and Wilson might have have been effectively disarmed. Even so. it is doubtful if they have pleased everyone.

Mr Wilson, the back selector, called on both the province’s leading full-backs, Richard Wilson and Doug Heffernan, in the early part of the season and. significantly. opted for Heffernan to play against the Lions. Since then, however, he has relied on Wilson and. although Wilson has been adequate, he has given no con-

(elusive proof that he is; superior to Heffernan, who) may still have the brighter) future of the pair. Wilson j has not helped himself, either, by being inconsistent) with his goal-kicking. Barring injury, Mr Wilson ■ I will undoubtedly stick with his unrelated namesake for [the two remaining games and it will be other positions that he will be giving I more attention to. On the wings, for example, an interesting [three-way contest has developed. It was about this time .last year that Scott Cartwright was reaping the rewards of a most successful [season for Canterbury. He [advanced, via the South Island side, into the All ) Blacks and. just before leaving on the tour to Argentina. was named Canteriburv’s “player of the vear.”

This season, he has retraced his steps, although it was never very likely that he would remain an All Black against the Lions. But, a week after failing to retain the place that was earlier thought likelv for him in the Scuth Island side, he was omitted from the Canterbury team.

This was for the game last Sunday against Welling-

ton and Cartwright, whose’ biggest problem seems to be that he has lost a yard or two of pace, now has to displace Terry Mitchell or Randall Scott, both of whom are playing well. Murray McEwan has done enough in recent games to dispel suggestions that he should be dropped and the side’s two centres, Shane I Gibbons and Andy Jefferd, brought together in mid-field, with Jefferd taking McEwan’s place at second five-eighths.

This leaves Mr Wilson with a straight choice of Gibbons or Jefferd, with Donald Stewart, who was almost the equal of them early in the season, waiting patiently in the wings. After his fine game last Sunday, Jefferd would be unlucky to be dropped but Gibbons had been playing so well previously that he will very likely come back into the side now that the danger period for the concussion he received a fortnight ago has passed. Doug Bruce is in the unique position among the backs of being unchallenged for his position at first five-eighths, an honour he until recently shared with the half-back, Lyn Davis.

Many fine half-backs have come and gone during Davis’ long career with Canterbury and his latest challenger, Mark Romans, is as good as any of them. Romans had an outstanding game last Sunday, when Davis was rested, and being returned to the reserves would be a poor reward.

However, to drop Davis would prejudice his chances of going to France with the All Blacks and this would be even more unfair. Romans’ turn will surely come. Mr Hill has not quite so many problems but he, too, faces the task of replacing an in-form forward to accommodate one with longer service. Tane Norton, back from his visit to South Africa, will presumably take over from John Black as hooker, with Black’s only comfort being that he may have attracted enough attention during Norton’s absence to put himself on the short list for France.

It is a pity, also, that a place cannot be found for the lively Old Boys’ flanker, Alwyn Harvey, who needs games to enhance his claims for a trip to France, a possibility following his selection for the South Island last week.

However, Mr Hill has got what he has wanted from the two flankers he has preferred, John Phillips and Dave Thompson, and is unlikely to go beyond them at this late stage. At its own request, the Canterbury team will have an extra training run at Lancaster Park on Saturday after the game between Canterbury B and Auckland B. The [ side to play Taranaki will then be announced and some [of those left out should not have to look far for sympathy.