Alex Coles

Um, and he's kind of rewarded people that have played a lot for him.

So Alex Coles comes in, um, Asher Apoko-Fajour.

Had a beer with him in Portugal.

Asher Apoko-Fajour?

And Bird Pinkerton thanked Flapton for the guitar and turned to leave.

"How do I get out of here?" Flapton turned to her and said, "Just remember to stand clear of the closing doors." Special thanks to Luke Bauma, Alex Coles, and thanks as always to Brian Resnick for co-creating the show with me and Bird.

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You know, the big hitters that they've got like George Martin, Olly Chesham, Maru Otoji.

These players that can grind out Alex Coles in the second row now, Jamie George, Luke Cowan-Dickey, they've got physical specimens in their team that are probably more suited, especially as a forward pack, to play in that tighter, less expansive game.

But the fans want to see this expansive rugby.

They want to see tries.

They are prioritising the retention of specifically their players well they're key players but specifically they're England qualified players seems to be a pattern that's emerging and Saints and with Saints you feel more than any other team probably the pressure is on for them to do that because more than any club at the minute they've become a victim of their own success in a salary cap context because they are developing their own players and they're bringing through players that are playing for England playing for the Lions and together and that's difficult to do as we've seen in the past with Saracens with Exeter you have to make compromises and the big sort of headline compromise in the last recruitment window was obviously George Furbank going which which was, was clearly quite significant and a significant story about what are we talking about 10 months ago when that, when it sort of begin, began bubbling that he might be on his, on his way out.

And, um, yeah, and it's, it seems that they're shrewd saints and, um, So last, to sort of go a bit chronologically with this, last season they had, among others, Alex Coles, Alex Mitchell, Finn Smith up.

It seems like they moved Smith to the marquee slot because that's what front-line fly halves have, big wage demands.

That's just a fact of the market.

Alex Coles is a line-out caller, very valuable operator.

Alex Mitchell is...

if it's not absolutely certain, he's pretty close to being England's front line nine and very important to how they play.

It's not easy to get the 1996 World Cup winning cricketers to come forward and play against this rugby team, but that was epic.

And, uh, Alex Coles bowling, uh, Aravinda de Silva, the great maestro got out.

I was at the covers, came, uh, running and give a high 10, went wrong.

His, uh, elbow got stuck, and it's a honorary badge for me with six stitches.

He's apparently 6'8", going on 6'9", as a a hell of an option there.

You've obviously got your Alex Coles, your Chun-Yu Munga.

You've got just great players across the board there, right? And they all do a slightly different role.

So in terms of that role-playing, you can afford to have someone like that when you've got so much versatility in the rest of your staff.

and he said hello to me once at a Hartbury game.

But I think that the big difference ultimately is Arthur Clarke is probably a couple of inches taller, pushing six foot eight, six foot nine sort of size, and pushing about 130 kilos.

So as that sort of size is a lock who... is as mobile and i think on the pitch in terms of skill set where arthur clark is slightly better is i actually think the lines he runs are quite underrated he certainly last season when gloucester were playing this sort of all-court attack from anywhere style of play a lot of the attacks were coming off of arthur clark line breaks which for a second row you might have like a um like an Alex Coles, a Zambanin, you look further afield to like a Konone or someone like that, who are there to sort of test the edges.

Arthur Clarke isn't in a team to do that, but the fact he's adding that onto his game is what just sort of pips Pipped Daff Jenkins to the post for me.

Yeah

... is ex of her school in Cambridge and looks absolutely like Alex Coles.

But anyway-

Yes, he does.