Hickey considers rotating Waratahs

NSW coach Chris Hickey may be forced to accelerate plans to rotate his squad, with injury doubts over two members of his pack for Saturday’s Super 14 clash with Western Force in Perth.

Neither No.8 Wycliff Palu (hamstring) or prop Al Baxter (calf) ran at training on Thursday and were struggling to be fit enough in time to make the flight west on Friday.

Hickey has Sekope Kepu on standby to replace Baxter, with Dan Palmer poised to be the bench prop.

If Palu doesn’t make it, Ben Mowen will come into the starting side with Locky (Locky) McCaffrey to come on to the bench.

McCaffrey has yet to play a Super match and was on the bench for one game in South Africa.

Hickey had initially named the same 22 for the third consecutive week.

With his team riding on the back of successive wins, Hickey didn’t want to disturb their rhythm.

However with their bye not scheduled until round 10 he was wary of wearing down some of his players if he just stuck to fielding the same team.

“It’s a bit of a dilemma, every week you’ve got an important game to play and a challenge,” Hickey told AAP.

“You want to have your best team on the field, but you also want those players reasonably fresh and available at the end of the year.

“Once you get into this stage of the season you do start to look at possibly rotating.

“But you’ve got to be careful that doesn’t jeopardise your chances to win the game you’ve got to play on the weekend.

“We are probably in a reasonable position to do that (rotate players), given we’ve got a strong bench and players there who are certainly capable of starting games, so that’s something you start to have a look at at this stage of the season.

“We don’t get our bye until round 10, which is a fair way into the competition, so we may have to try and look at that in the next week or two given that the bye is that late in the season.”

McCaffrey, who was the Sydney club rugby player of the year in 2009, signed a two-year Super contract with the Waratahs on Thursday.

Sydney University premiership-winning prop Paddy Ryan has also been elevated from the Junior Waratahs squad and signed up as a senior player for two years.

Discover the best in new art and culture at our sister site, Lost At E Minor

The Roar 2010 Book is a piece of Aussie sports history featuring the best expert columns and roar of the crowd articles, and a short exclusive essay reflecting on the year in Aussie sport. Pre-order now.

© 2010 AAP