Swansea RFC head coach, Hugh Gustafson believes his side will need to improve from last seasons Indigo Premiership campaign where his side finished in 10th place on 42 points and admits this comes from consistency of selection with players.
“I think it was a transitional season especially for Swansea knowing that the league was coming up getting that ready,”’said Gustafson.
“We’ve been developing some really good young players, but not being successful on the field not having that squad depth proved costly and this year signing two or three players has made the difference for us.”
Gustafson has made some new signings over the off season with one being at outside-half Josh Phillips signing from Pontypridd. Other signings include Tom Edwards (Wing), Chris Davies (Prop), Luca Giannini (Back row), Chris Thompson (Second Row), Ben Roberts (Second Row), Aron Hemmings (Scrum half), Iwan Temblett (Scrum half), Callum Carson (Centre), Callum Dodd (Centre), James Davies (Outside-half) and Ellis Frackrell (Prop).
They’ve been huge for us, Josh Phillips at ten, Ben Roberts and Geraint Powell have been good for height for us, so it’ll be exciting to have those tall boys in the lineout and having Callum Carson back is going to help play an exciting brand of rugby for us,” added Gustafson.
The new 10-team tournament has replaced the old 13-club Indigo Premiership and is now the top tier of rugby in Wales under the regional level and one of it’s main aims is to provide academy players a higher standard of matches and more frequent opportunities.
“We’ve done a lot of developing before a lot of other clubs, just look now at the likes of Morgan Morris, and Dewi Lake who we helped develop a long time ago when Dewi wasn’t playing for Bridgend and he came to us for gametime now he’s a Welsh International,” said Gustafson.
“The question is did we help, probably not us much as the Ospreys did, but we helped facilitate his minutes. Now with the likes of Harri Houston and Morgan Morse these boys are now having games and are ready to step-up. We’ve done it for a long time producing a lot of Wales U20s players.
Tomorrow afternoon will see The Whites finish their pre-season off against Swansea University, on pre-season he continued: “We are going into our last pre-season game against Swansea University and we’ve had a good hitout against Neath winning by five points, a good couple of tries against the Ospreys and we are seeing a bit more depth going into the Swansea University game on Saturday.
Onto next weekend when The Whites kickoff with a trip too Carmarthen Park to face Carmarthen Quins (KO: 2:30pm), on the new season fast approaching he said: “We need to be better than last year, get some more wins and wins coming from more consistency of selection with players and in between that help develop future Ospreys players and internationals.”
“I remember one year we were almost a calendar year undefeated and it was a bit of a buzz and we are looking forward to getting back there and playing a good brand of rugby to get some wins under our belt.
“All the clubs are going to be competitive now and we definitely will push ourselves against teams like Llandovery, Newport and we’ll see how we go against them guys.
“We kickoff away to Carmarthen Quins and it’s always a tough place to go, we won the last game there but it’s always a tough place. It’s a small pitch, they are physical and the battle will be huge in the first game and I can’t wait for it,” Gustafson concluded.
Words By Harry Tovey
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