The only way is up

Happy New Year!   Talk about an opening day of firsts...

...new identify, new sponsors (even if some people don’t like the nature of their business – I can’t wait to use a heap of puns around the word Satsuma), new coach (who saw that coming when we climbed aboard the fun bus for a miserable trip home from Oxford back in May?) and a fistful of new players. First of all a word of warning - good luck to all of you who will be putting pen to paper (or is it keyboard to screen?) as I cannot for the life of me write about our team without automatically typing Leeds not Yorkshire. Perhaps set yourself up with an automatic word checker to replace any of the L words that sneak in.

While the back end of the summer is a lovey time to catch some good weather down in the far south west, I fear it’s not the best time for Yorkshire Carnegie to be visiting Cornish Pirates. Having secured their only victory at The Mennaye last season and not enjoying an opening day win for six seasons a win is a bit of a tall order. However with a new head coach to impress and that new head coach having a week or so to shore up the defence – although he’s said to have helped out in training this rather than take charge; which is something I like the sound of. Why charge in and change something that appears not to be broken? Rather why not sit back and look at where a bit of fine tuning is needed? Getting back to the point, I think a narrow win is on the cards.

So what team? Given the number of injuries, I‘d start with the majority of the team that started against Gloucester replacing with Nilsen for Graham, Georgiou for Goss, Vickerman for Burden. I’ve picked these as known safe pairs of hands then call the new signings off the bench as necessary. And after this week’s little fiasco, let’s hope our man has a brilliant start in his Yorkshire Carnegie career. I’m stuck for the locks as that’s where we have so many injuries. But my little heart will beat that bit quicker if Harry Casson starts – I think it’s warranted.

For those of you making the trip – have a fab time and safe journey. We were so nearly there – just as well we cancelled because as I type to finish what I started earlier this week, Mr Gelbel is in a hospital bed with a broken hip.

All in all, this season can, and will, only get better and that can start by getting off the bottom on the table.