Rugby Union: Chance for the Waterloo fringe

Jan 12 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

ALTHOUGH the Lancashire Cup dominated fixture list has affected the weekend for several Merseyside rugby union clubs, two or three of them are still involved in extremely interesting games.

Waterloo are delighted to be entertaining Broughton Park in the semi-final tomorrow (2.15pm) and are fielding a useful side with several promising fringe players.

In the absence through injury of Jason Duffy, they give a first team debut on the wing to James Gee, who is regarded as an extre-mely promising player, and should be able to give coach O’Callaghan a very good idea of his capability.

Dodd and Mazzucato are among the backs as usual, with Lowden at full-back and the highly-talented Alex Davies at fly-half partnered by Luke Stringer, so Broughton Park will have to find a bit of inspiration to hold them outside the scrum.

The pack is also not far from full strength, with Pani and Tyms in the front-row, Nugent and Davidson in the second, with Smith, Bradley and York at the back if the latter can recover from flu.

There are also a couple of highly-talented newcomers on the seven-strong bench, including Gareth Oliver in the back-row, and Don McVeigh, a former member of the St Helens Rugby League academy, who is ranked an excellent prospect at scrum-half.

Overall, it looks an impressive team, and coach O’Callaghan seems confident they will not only claim the club’s fourth victory in a row, but demonstrate that they do have quite a lot of talent available these days.

West Park are in the semi-finals as their opponents have pulled out. They face another blank weekend, just when they could do with a competitive match to prepare them for a couple of vital coming battles.

Elsewhere, LSH are hoping to complete their North One league game at Penrith, where they travelled the other week without being given a chance to play.

Lying just one place above the bottom three, who all face the prospect of relegation, they really do want to play, win and establish a useful gap above them.