A post about S-D that is really about Varndell or Habana

Reading that Simpson-Daniel is injured, again, we are left IMHO with four options for the back three Varndell, Lewsey, Cueto and Balshaw. If we have any more injuries I will happily call on Cohen or Voyce but I will stick with my first four for now.

I have some further thoughts on Varndell following his Middlesex Sevens performance and I expect Tigers to be in contact with me following this post. Varndell is not as bad in defence as some people think, however the sevens showed that teams are working out how best to attack him. His main defensive ploy is to shadow players knowing he is faster than them. This fails when teams flood his channel and the wide player is able to offload to an inside runner, causing Varndell to go in a dizzying zig-zag motion as he chases players down the pitch. Usually a fast player can work the shadowing well, but becomes vulnerable when the inside defender get left behind or there are numbers running at the wide channel, and this is what I saw teams try in the sevens.
My first mission with Varndell would be to stop people talking about his defence, particularly him not making the hit. So I would get him to start knocking people down, early and often. He does it in attack with his powerful hand-off, so I'm sure he can hit hard in defence. I would want him to blitz the outside attackers and make sure someone goes down, then use his speed to recover his position, or catch a runner. (I was going to say take someone from behind, but there are too many smutty people on this bored :-) ) In fact this is exactly how Brian Habana defends, he rushes up which scares the life out of an attacker, hits someone and hopefully causing them to spill the ball, then he takes a roving role, if the move is still going, you will often see him knocking down unsuspecting runners.

I'm glad I got that off my chest. :-)