Gloucester-Hartpury 'benefitting' from squad rotation
Wales wing Nel Metcalfe has now scored six tries for her club this season
- Published
Gloucester-Hartpury are "benefitting most" from their players pushing each other in training amid competition for places, says assistant coach Matt Banahan.
The three-time reigning Premiership Women's Rugby champions have won all eight of their matches this season and are five points clear at the top of the table.
They beat Loughborough 45-26 when the league returned after a six-week break last weekend and Banahan said they plan to keep rotating their squad to keep other teams guessing who and how they will play.
"We give ourselves different challenges each week of what we want to achieve and how we want to merge it, what the bench setup is like, who we give opportunities to," Banahan told BBC Radio Gloucestershire.
"What we do pride ourselves on, especially that first half [of the season] pre-Christmas, is how much we rotated the squad and gave ourselves the best opportunity.
"I still think we want to try and do that, we don't want to be 15 players who are dead certs to be on the pitch."
Gloucester-Hartpury scored seven tries against Loughborough, including a hat-trick for winger Nel Metcalfe.
Banahan, who joined the club coaching staff this summer along with new head of rugby Dan Murphy, said the competition for the starting 15 places is pushing the standard up higher.
"The girls are fantastic at taking feedback and understanding what we're trying to do when we do change people for certain situations or pitches or weather, or people coming back from injury," Banahan said.
"They train well each week, they push their opposite number or the person who is selected to the highest level they can be and that's what's benefiting us the most."
Gloucester-Hartpury travel to Sale on Saturday (12:30 GMT) for their next match, with the Sharks' only win this campaign coming on the opening day on 25 October.
Banahan added that the win against Loughborough was even better than he thought when he watched the game back and that has given renewed confidence this weekend.
"You've got to take in the conditions that we've played in - greasy, the rain came down, we hadn't played in six weeks together so to create that many opportunities, be that ruthless and execute some really good pieces of skill.
"It's quite rewarding to start this block and keep going forward."
