ITV<\/a>.<\/p>\n“I do think the No.6 shirt – and by the way, Alex Mann was great in the Six Nations – is up for grabs.<\/p>\n
“We should celebrate this, that we can have a debate over who starts, is it Alex Mann or James Botham? James Botham is an exceptional athlete and a really good lineout option, good ball carrier, good on the floor and a really good all-rounder.<\/p>\n
“He has a real opportunity to make the six shirt his own but has a big battle with Alex Mann, which should bring the best out of you.”<\/p>\n
Tandy poised to make changes for Springboks<\/p>\n
Steve Tandy says he will make changes for next Saturday’s daunting clash against world champions South Africa in Durban.<\/p>\n
Wales fell to a disappointing 35-21 defeat to Argentina in Santa Fe and will finish their season with the toughest task in world rugby.<\/p>\n
And Tandy says he will freshen up his team ahead of facing the Springboks in their own backyard.<\/p>\n
“Everyone might not get a chance but we’ll definitely make some changes from the game,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s a lot of travel and it is physical.<\/p>\n
“You are playing Fiji and the Barbarians as well which has been big for us.<\/p>\n
“Argentina was also a big game.<\/p>\n
“We’ll assess everyone and see how they pull up and make a decision tomorrow evening on the team.”<\/p>\n
Despite getting overpowered by the Pumas Tandy is adamant Wales are heading in the right direction.<\/p>\n
“I talk a lot about us and where we are going from first, second and third campaign,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We had a great result last week and again we would like more from our performance but I think that’s the expectation we have as a group going forward.<\/p>\n
“There’s disappointment but going to the world champions we know they can probably put two or three teams out that are really impressive.<\/p>\n
“It’s good for us to learn from today and then assess how we want to go and attack the game next Saturday.<\/p>\n
“I’m obviously disappointed with the result.<\/p>\n
“I’m disappointed with some of the performance in the first-half but I thought our boys stuck in and potentially could have got four tries and a losing bonus point.<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot of lessons in there for us coming away from home we need to be more accurate.<\/p>\n
“Argentina probably dominated the physicality piece early doors so that’s something we definitely need to have a look at going forward.”<\/p>\n
Townsend hits out at ‘headbutt’ decision in South Africa defeat<\/p>\n
Scotland boss Gregor Towsend insists Souith Africa’s Ben-Jason Dixon was lucky not to be sent off for a dangerous clear-out on Scotty Cummings during their Nations Championship clash on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Dixon was given a yellow card by referee Pierre Brousset for the incident, which happened two minutes into the second half.<\/p>\n
That decision stayed after an off-field review, as the contract with Cummings was deemed to be ‘glancing’.<\/p>\n
However, Townsend believes the Stormers forward was lucky to stay on the pitch.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looked like a head-on-head collision,” he said afterwards.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard that it was a glancing blow, so I was obviously disappointed that a headbutt, which is what it looked like from my own case, was viewed that way.<\/p>\n
“I think we understood going into this game that not all the calls would be in our favour, and the players had to adjust to that, and they did in the main.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think we also have to look at ourselves, and our discipline at times just gave South Africa a couple of easy inroads into that second half, where we put so much effort into creating opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n
England hit by injury blow<\/p>\n
Alex Mitchell has been ruled out of England’s Nations Championship clash against Argentina after picking up a hamstring injury in the 73-8 demolition of Fiji on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Mitchell came on as a second-half replacement for Jack van Poortvliet at the Hill Dickinson Stadium, but lasted just nine minutes before limping off the field.<\/p>\n
The British and Irish Lions scrum-half has already suffered two previous hamstring injuries, the first of which ruled him out of the Six Nations<\/a>.<\/p>\nAnd he’s now set to miss his side’s trip to the Santiago del Estero.<\/p>\n
Head coach Steve Borthwick said: \u201cI don\u2019t know at this stage whether it\u2019s a recurrence of the hamstring injury he\u2019s had a couple of times already this season, nor can I confirm the length at this early stage of how long he\u2019s going to be absent for, but it looks like he won\u2019t be able to be part of next week.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here’s your round up of all the latest rugby headlines for Sunday, July 11. Warburton: Five players are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,11051,101,11537,7168,56,54,55,9015],"class_list":["post-687380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sam-warburton","tag-sports","tag-steve-tandy","tag-todays-updates","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wales-rugby-team"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}