8 November 2013
At the LV= Cup Launch at Sandy Park on Tuesday, I took the opportunity to catch up with former England captain and LV= Cup ambassador Lewis Moody. The last time I interviewed Lewis was at last year's final for the LV= Young Reporter competition so it was great to catch up with him and hear his thoughts on this season's competition as well as his verdict on England's win over Australia...
 |
| LV= Cup Final 2012/13 |
In the LV= Cup there is a great focus on the youngsters that each side puts out. With big name players often out on international duty, clubs get the opportunity to showcase some of their finest young gems. Lewis had lots of thoughts about which young players we should be looking out for this season…
“Here at Exeter Luke Cowan-Dickie is playing well and off the back of Jack Nowell winning the Breakthrough Player Award I think they’re producing a lot of young talent and they know how to break through."
“Charlie Walker at Harlequins has a good opportunity to step up and show Quins just what he’s made of. I imagine Luke Wallace will get a lot of game time too and it seems like he’s been around a while but he always plays well when I see him. I think the opportunity for him to step whilst Chris Robshaw is away is a big one."
“Owen Williams at Leicester is a young Welsh fly-half and he had his first start for Leicester two weekends ago. I think he’ll be buoyed on the confidence of that and I know the Welsh selectors rave about him and I know Leicester rave about him so it’ll be interesting to see how he can take over from George Ford.”
Harlequins were victorious against Sale at Sixways last season but this time round it seems the Welsh teams could be in with a shout and Quins could be edged out of holding their title as LV= Cup Champions.
“The LV= Cup is such a difficult one to predict until you know which individuals are going to play so it’ll be interesting to see what teams are put out there. We’ll see a lot of young guys given opportunities to play. I think it’ll be taken out of Quins’ hands this year because Saints look strong and some of the Welsh teams like the Ospreys look good - there’s a great match in the second round between Ospreys and Cardiff which will be a big game.”
With England’s somewhat shabby victory over Australia fresh in the mind, Lewis discussed how important getting the win was but admitted it wasn’t England’s finest performance.
“The most important thing about the weekend is that they won. It was by no means a good performance from England in terms of technically and there was a number of things that went wrong but they got the win.”
“Stuart [Lancaster] has always been one of those guys prepared to give people an opportunity. I think Billy Vunipola had a good game and they put their confidence in Mike Brown at full-back ahead of Ben Foden and I think he proved himself. I think the only area England need to nail down is the midfield partnership but I think Stuart will be fairly confident going into the Argentina game.”
With this season’s LV= Cup focused on the wider rugby family, I took the opportunity to ask Lewis about the most intimidating ground he visited in his playing days…
“The most formidable place to visit was the Shed at Gloucester. It was always such an imposing venue with the fans getting right behind their team and right into the opposition which made it such an intimidating ground to play in… but my favourite ground was always Leicester’s Welford Road.”
The LV= Cup kicks off this tonight! Have a read of Scrum Five’s interview with London Irish fan Pete who gave his thoughts on this season’s competition by clicking here! Also, don’t forget to have a look at this blog post about the LV= Cup Launch at Sandy Park!
This weekend’s fixtures are as follows:
Friday
Cardiff Blues v Worcester, 19:30
London Wasps v Saracens, 19:30
Scarlets v Newport Gwent Dragons, 19:30
Leicester v Ospreys, 19:45
Sale v Bath, 19:45
Saturday
Exeter v Harlequins, 15:00
Northampton v Gloucester, 17:00
Sunday
Newcastle v London Irish, 15:00
