Use of the bench

With seven subs to choose from, if a coach makes the right call and brings off the right player for a pair of fresh legs, it can make a huge difference. Deans in his early reign as Australia's coach was, rightly, criticised for not using his bench enough.

Yet when you look at the bench, it is comprised of five specialist players: hooker, prop (someone who covers both sides), lock, halfback and flyhalf. That leaves two positions for a backrow utility player and a back three or centre cover.

Taking yesterday's Ireland NZ game, Williams came on for Rettalick, Weepu came on for Smith, Franks for his brother and Smith for Savea. Now the problem for me is that Williams and Weepu are questionably in the squad and if Hansen didn't use them, people would have questioned why they were in the side. Now I can see why you would bring on experience in Weepu and Williams but for my mind Smith looked the best AB out there yesterday. Did Deans take off Genia when it came to the crunch? Henry used to employ a tactic of two halfbacks playing more or less the halves. But I think that was more because he didn't trust either player to play the full 80 minutes. I could see why Smith was brought on for Savea, who looked fragile under the high ball. I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with the replacements but sometimes I wonder if coaches make a substitution just for the sake of using their bench.

Let's take England vs SA. Youngs gets carted off even though he looked to be playing very well. Is that fatigue, is it tactical or is it I better make some substitutions.

My question to you I guess is how well does your coach use the bench and how constrained are coaches in their choice of substitutions because of the players they have to have on the bench?

Kia...it is simply unacceptible to bring Lee Mears on in an international against a unit like South Africa....