Family ties will be temporarily put on hold on Wednesday night for the Sidoli brothers when Newport Gwent Dragons closest and biggest rivals, the Blues, visit Rodney Parade for a Celtic League match, kick off 7.35pm.
Coach Paul Turner has kept faith with the team that narrowly lost to Connacht on the weekend making only one change on the replacements bench with Andrew Hall coming in. Centre Hal Luscombe is still ruled out with a chest injury. Steve Jones is a doubt with a shoulder injury and The Dragons will delay making a decision on him until before kick off against the Blues.
“It was extremely frustrating to lose on the weekend especially after such an impressive win over Munster the week before,” commented Head coach Paul Turner. “It is a hard defeat to swallow especially as we were on the point of the season opening up for us. However, players have been made aware that performances like the one shown in Galway should not exist within the group and we move on and focus on our home form which sees us undefeated in 2006. We have a busy few days with two Welsh derby games in the space of four days and we will look to regroup, perform at Rodney Parade against the Blues as we have done in 2006 and aim to secure a place in next seasons Heineken Cup competition.”
The Dragons and the Blues have gone head-to-head on five previous occasions with The Dragons currently leading the series 3-2.
7th November 2003 Blues 13 Dragons 25
17th April 2004 Dragons 48 Blues 25
11th September 2004 Blues 18 Dragons 8
27th December 2004 Dragons 25 Blues 21
27th December 2005 Blues 41 Dragons 23
The Dragons are expecting their biggest crowd of the season for Wednesday night’s game with the Rodney Parade ticket office being exceptionally busy. Looking ahead to the match wing Gareth Wyatt commented, “The Blues have come into form of late and are playing well so Wednesday’s night game will be a tough one for us. In the three years of Regional rugby the rivalry between the Blues and The Dragons remains as intense as the old Newport v Cardiff days. The match has quickly established itself as one of the biggest crowd pullers of the season with over 12,000 people watching the derby game at the Arms Park in December and we are hoping that we will reach capacity at Rodney Parade tomorrow night and supporters will get behind the Men of Gwent and roar us onto a famous victory as they did against Munster and Leicester.”
Following Wednesday night’s game The Dragons will travel west down the M4 on Saturday for a match against Llanelli Scarlets. Dragons wing Nathan Brew is showing a return to his pre-injury form and is anticipating Saturday’s game to be another tough one for the Men of Gwent. “Wednesday night is a huge match for us as we aim to put our ambition of qualifying for Europe back on track following a disappointing weekend in Galway. We then have another big game on Saturday when we take on the Scarlets. They have been playing well recently, reached the finals of the Powergen Cup and were unlucky to lose last weekend against Leinster. The Dragons have never won at Stradey and while our away form has been extremely disappointing this season and unacceptable we aim to put this right on the weekend and leave Stradey Park with four points.”
Dragons Team to face the Blues
Aled Thomas, Gareth Wyatt, Jon Bryant, Ceri Sweeney, Nathan Brew, Craig Warlow, Gareth Baber, Adam Black, Steve Jones / Andrew Brown, Rhys Thomas, Ian Gough, Luke Charteris, Jamie Ringer, Jason Forster (c), Michael Owen
Replacements
Andrew Brown, David Maddocks, Gethin Robinson, Peter Sidoli, Andrew Hall, Ben Breeze, James Ireland
