RugbyRebels

I was thinking about this while pondering the relative luck with injuries that England have had and who we absolutely could not afford to lose. Who would be the worst player for your side to lose to injury - the most destructive to your chances of doing well? Conversely, which of your regular 1st XV would be the least damaging to your cause if they were lost to injury?

For England, if you'd asked me last month, I'd have said Youngs - not because he's good, but because we'd left ourselves with no backup for him. However, Heinz has turned out to be a functional international 9 and that's not as big of a risk. We have some crucial players in George, Itoje, BillyV, May, and Manu, but their backups are all good players. I'd say our most critical is Sinckler, as the gap between him and Cole is massive, and he does make such a difference to our attack. Plus he's been part of a side that's beaten NZ and has no fear of any team in the tournament. This is not to mention that we've only picked two tightheads and 4 fit props, so if Sinckler goes down, we're left with a loosehead covering tighthead and a hooker covering loosehead.

It is tempting to say Farrell as the least damaging of our starters to lose, and if we play him at 10 in the big games, then it'd actively improve the side! However, I do rate him as a 12 outside Ford and there must be something about his leadership that makes everyone rave about him. I'd say least damaging is whoever our starting right wing currently is, as Nowell, Watson, and Cokanasiga are all of a similar level (if with very different strengths!) and can swap round fairly easily.

Puja

Worst to lose... I concur, Sinck
Best to lose... Farrell.
Or McConnochie

Any Kiwis care to chip in - I'd be interested to know what your ones are.

Puja

I would have said Aaron Smith for NZ, but give the injury to Brodie then Sam Whitelock is the man not to lose

Sinckler would be a massive loss to England, partly the drop to Cole, partly Mako is out too. Losing Youngs I'd still take as a big blow, Heinz has the pace of a statue, and no experience in senior games, not even big league games and European rugby. But even then if I were playing against England there are just so many phases that Billy V influences that if he's taken out all of a sudden you can start to look after the carrying options inside and outside him, but with him there it's just a constant broadside of power running options, we're now the Toulon of test rugby, Toulon as was back with Jonny and Giteau

For the All Blacks, losing Whitelock could be a real problem, especially if it happened before Retallick was properly fit. S Barrett and Tuipulotu are test standard but not world beaters. Beneath them there are some question marks. Hemopo has been used as a lock but is green, and Romano hasn’t been capped since 2017.

I would also be worried if we lost either B Barrett or Richie Mo. There’s no real cover in the squad (despite what Shag said about Crotty and J Barrett) and next cab off the rank is Josh Ioane with all of 40 minutes of rest rugby under his belt, all played with a 50+ point lead.

As for most expendable, any prop that can be replaced by Owen Franks or Karl Tu’inukuafe.

Worst to lose - Billy -- I can't help but feel that losing Billy puts so much extra pressure on every other forward that we'd really struggle to make up for it…

Best to lose - Farrell (though, the media noise would be awful)

Most expendable - McConnochie, Coganasiga or Nowell

For Ireland Furlong/James ryan would be biggest loss

For Scotland the least expendable is probably McInally for me. The drop off is significant at hooker, he's our most effective carrier and probably our most effective leader. Honourable mention to Russell who is a bit unique in the way he plays but there are those whod prefer the more prosaic options (I'm not one of them). Not picking Hogg as Kinghorn and Graham are capable of producing moments of magic too.

Most expendable is probably Turner (3rd choice hooker) or Horne (3rd choice scrummie). But I actually think it might be Seymour who hasn't been in form for 12 months and who has the afformentioned youngsters after his place.

Renniks wrote:Worst to lose - Billy -- I can't help but feel that losing Billy puts so much extra pressure on every other forward that we'd really struggle to make up for it…

Best to lose - Farrell (though, the media noise would be awful)

Most expendable - McConnochie, Coganasiga or Nowell

If we went on to do well, silencing the media noise would be absolutely delightful.
Though I suspect that nothing short of winning the final by thumping New Zealand would actually result in the media shutting up about how much better we'd have been with Farrell.

For me, Sinkler would be the biggest loss, as it's the biggest gap between 1st and 2nd choice, let alone 1st and 3rd, who'd need be called up.

Most expendable would be Nowell/McConnochie (do we really need 5 wingers? One of whom is I jured) or Francis (We have 3 other IC options in the squad, 2 of whom play the same way)

I'm glad to say that no one is indispensable in the Wales first XV (which is not always the case). I would choose the following:

Least expendable would be Alun-Wyn Jones, for leadership, setting the example, work rate, experience and all-round legendaryness.

Most expendable would be Navidi or Wainwright (whichever is in the first XV), not because they're at all bad but because we have unusual depth in this position (unusual for Wales, that is).

JD2 is very important too, the drop to the next cab off the rank is stark. At least Wales have found a way not to worry about losing ball carriers