{"id":329616,"date":"2025-12-05T15:03:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T15:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/329616\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T15:03:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T15:03:08","slug":"we-didnt-feel-it-was-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/329616\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We didn\u2019t feel it was right’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Newcastle<\/a> Red Bulls<\/a> have named their team for Saturday\u2019s EPCR Challenge Cup<\/a> opener away to Lyon, with head coach Alan Dickens clarifying why new recruit Christian Wade<\/a> has not yet been selected.<\/p>\n

The PREM strugglers are winless after six rounds of their domestic season and head to France<\/a> looking for what head coach Alan Dickens hopes will be a spark.<\/p>\n

The Matmut Stadium trip opens a four-game pool schedule, with the top four booking a spot in the last 16. George McGuigan<\/a> leads a reshuffled side after the Leicester<\/a> loss, with Boeta Chamberlain<\/a> taking over at full-back, Harrison Obatoyinbo<\/a> coming in on the left wing and Tom Gordon restored to his usual blind-side role.<\/p>\n

Dickens, a two-time Challenge Cup winner with Northampton<\/a> Saints, said: \u201cIt\u2019s a competition I really like, and it will be useful for us in terms of injecting some momentum into our league season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI won the Challenge Cup once as a player and once as a coach, and it\u2019s a trophy in its own right, so we want to go for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will help develop the competition within our squad as guys are challenging each other for selection, and it should be a good game over in Lyon. Like ourselves, they\u2019ve not had an easy start to the league season and they\u2019ll be looking to change their fortunes, and it\u2019s always a great atmosphere when you go over to these French grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

With backs and attack coach Stephen Jones<\/a> starting work this week and former England<\/a> flyer Wade joining the training ranks, Dickens added: \u201cStephen has got outstanding calibre and will add a lot to our game, so we look forward to seeing how that develops over the coming weeks and months.<\/p>\n

\u201cChristian has started training with us but we didn\u2019t feel it was right to chuck him straight into a game, having just come off the back of a rugby league season. He\u2019s a very diligent professional and has looked after himself really well, and then just around the environment he\u2019s a great character who has brought the energy we all know him for.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis time will come over the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime we\u2019ve got a good group heading over to Lyon<\/a> and I\u2019m excited to see how we go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newcastle Red Bulls:\u00a0 15 Boeta Chamberlain<\/a>, 14 Oli Spencer, 13 Alex Hearle<\/a>, 12 Ethan Grayson<\/a>, 11 Harrison Obatoyinbo<\/a>, 10 Brett Connon<\/a>, 9 Sam Stuart; 1 Adam Brocklebank<\/a>, 2 George McGuigan (captain), 3 Murray McCallum<\/a>, 4 Oscar Usher<\/a>, 5 Jamie Hodgson<\/a>, 6 Tom Gordon, 7 Tom Christie<\/a>, 8 Amanaki Mafi.<\/p>\n

Replacements: 16 Ollie Fletcher<\/a>, 17 Connor Hancock<\/a>, 18 Micky Rewcastle, 19 Finn Baker<\/a>, 20 Cameron Neild<\/a>, 21 Sim\u00f3n Ben\u00edtez Cruz, 22 Cameron Hutchison<\/a>, 23 Stefan Coetzee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newcastle Red Bulls have named their team for Saturday\u2019s EPCR Challenge Cup opener away to Lyon, with head…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-329616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}