Henson on comeback trail at Dragons

DRAGONS head coach Bernard Jackman is hopeful Gavin Henson will still play a big part in the season despite a knee injury from Dragons’ first PRO14 fixture of the season.

“I hope that it is not the case that Gavin has played his last match,” Jackman said. “The frustrating thing with Gavin is initially we thought it was a week or two injury. But it was found there was a lot of fluid in his knee, which kept building up, so we had to really take a step back before we could move forward.”

Jackman says former Wales international Henson, right, can now step up his rehabilitation.

“It is looks like we’ve now reached a point where we can go forward again. He’s going to pick up his running, starting next week,” he said. So it should be a return to play in three weeks if everything goes well.

“That seems to be the advice we have at the moment from the experts and we hope that remains the case.” Jackman expressed regret over the departure of defence coach Hendre Marnitz. Dragons announced they have parted company with Marnitz, who joined the region in August 2017. The region conceded 127 tries in the 29 league games since his appointment. “I think it is an unfortunate part of professional sport,” Jackman said.

“Tough decisions are made regularly in this kind of environment.

“We just have to move on from it and make the team better and try to defend better, because it hasn’t been an area of the game that has been up to the level we expect.”