Agree that Saili not starting would not normally be a great thing. But when I see Taps at 12 I'm suddenly absolutely fine with it. Even though, on paper, I too think Saili is the more talented player overall.
The major difference for me this season is Gussy's player management - rotating the squad, keeping everyone at as close to 100% as they can possibly be. The guy is a true squad manager - something we haven't really had since Deano left (not that we needed it in 2011/12 of course).
The funny thing about 2011-2012 is that while most of us would agree on the preferred starting XV for that season (Brown; Williams, Lowe, Turner-Hall, Monye; Evans, Care; Marler, Gray, Johnston, Kohn, Robson, Fa'asavalu, Robshaw, Easter), the number of times that it took the field that season was surprisingly low...
We started with that lineup precisely once. In the final itself.
14 out of that 15 started in a handful of matches, but there were also times when we were down to bare bones. At one point during the RWC we had something like 13 players out with their countries or with injury, and we were playing a back row of York, Wallace and Robshaw for several weeks.
We didn't need it, because it happened for us anyway - we had to rotate players but fortunately the injuries fell in areas we had good cover.
