Dai Young is keeping his fingers firmly crossed that Saturday’s United Rugby Championship clash against Edinburgh Rugby goes ahead, following recent disruptions to the rugby calendar due to Covid.
Both of Cardiff’s festive derbies were called off due to outbreaks within the squad, meaning the side haven’t played since December 18.
However, a large portion of the senior squad haven’t featured since October, following the Autumn Nations Series and the forced quarantine upon their return from South Africa.
Young says his side are itching to take to the field at the Scottish capital on Saturday, but knows there are plenty of surprises that could be sprung before the kick off at the DAM Health Stadium.
“I’ve got my fingers crossed until we kick off in this crazy world that we’re in. We’ve been more or less ready at this of the week for three of four games now, but they’ve gone awry,” explained the club’s director of rugby.
“We’ve got a clean bill of health this week, so far. Hopefully that continues and Edinburgh do as well.
“Until we’re actually kicking the ball off and get going, anything can happen in this world.
We’re really looking forward to getting a game and we’re pretty hopeful it’ll happen this week.
“Everyone are keeping their fingers crossed that we get across the white line and get a game going.
“We’re looking forward to it because we have a lot of boys who haven’t played for a long time now.
“For some of these players, the last game they played was against Dragons so everyone is excited to get out and play.
“To be honest, I’ve never experienced anything like it before. Forget South Africa for a minute. Being back here for the last few weeks. We’ve probably had to pick four different teams last week.
“We pick teams early in the week to prepare, then you have two guys who have personal or family-related Covid issues.
“So you end up changing the team three or four times in a week.
“But not only that, it’s how it hinders training. You can’t do live scrums and live mauls.
“The meetings can’t be any longer than 15 minutes, and they have to be outside. They’ve gone down very well, as you can imagine, with the weather we’ve had over the last two weeks.
“It doesn’t only make selection difficult, but it makes the preparations difficult as well.
“You’re constantly thinking ‘what if’. ‘What if this or that guy isn’t available?’
“It’s a real challenging period and you’ve got to adapt. That’s what we’ve told the players.
“You’ve got to expected the unexpected and the team can change various times in a week.
“But at the end of the day we’ve got to get on with it and play rugby now.”
The last time Cardiff took to the field was in the memorable Heineken Champions Cup double header, where a team consisting of senior internationals, academy youngsters and semi professional players valiantly took on Toulouse and Harlequins.
With the majority of the squad watching on from their quarantine hotels, Young believes the experience will have brought the squad closer together while the likes of Seb Davies and James Botham would’ve benefitted from their leadership responsibilities over the two weeks.
“I was really pleased with the squad that played when we were away. Players like Seb Davies and James Botham had to take much more of a leadership role,” added Young.
“In that period, if anything, they had to mature because when we’re all here there’s more senior guys to lead.
“It definitely helped a number of players, and they’re two prime examples.
“For us, it was great to get those games on and our senior guys did a great job the younger players and semi pros.
“They’ve taken confidence from that and I’d like to think it brought us a bit closer together.
“It was a difficult period but we stuck together and hopefully we’ve come out as a closer unit.”