Looks like we’re getting the injury crisis in early this season.
DDP, Sharkey, Raffi, Ross, Tommy; Bev, Ernie and TomC from last week; and now probably Fordy and JLDP and goodness knows who I’ve forgotten in the rush.
It never rains but it pours…
Sometimes I hate being right. From last week’s report:
My head says that we’ll narrowly lose a game that we had several chances to win.
And that—apart from the “narrowly”—is pretty much how it went down.
Forget their final try: that was just icing on their cake. At eighty minutes, the difference between the teams was that we’d given them seven kickable penalties, while they’d given us three. Also, we had butchered at least two nailed-on tries…
Losing George and J-L within the first ten minutes was not an ideal way to start a game in which we traditionally struggle. When Ford went off, RDP moved to fly half and Sam Bedlow came on at inside centre, putting us in the almost unprecedented position of having all seven backs playing in their correct positions. It’ll never catch on…
Even so, things were pretty even for the first twenty minutes when Gus was on hand to collect an offload from Bedlow to score the game’s first try. Did we dare hope?
Alas, no. Instead of pressing the advantage, we spent the next twenty minutes gifting them penalties, eventually resulting in Dug going to the bin. Four kicks at goal in that period, three of them successful. It’s a recurring problem: giving away a series of penalties and handing the initiative back to the opposition. Cut that out and we’ll go all the way but, as long as we keep letting them off the hook, we’ll struggle to impose ourselves.
Rob pulled one back three minutes into the red at the end of the first half to give us a one-point lead going into halftime, but it could and should have been much more than that.
But then, within five minutes of the restart, we’d given them two more penalties, so they’re now five up and we’re already chasing the game. To add insult to self-inflicted injury, Ben Curry and Hyron Andrews were, by this point, already off for HIAs, having clashed heads in the first minutes of the second half.
They eventually returned to the pitch but, by then, Saracens had already scored a try and, with Rob kicking another penalty, we were nine points down and things were looking bleak.
Hope was restored when Dickie went over in the corner to reduce the deficit to four, but Daly scored almost immediately after to restore the gap.
Then Jamie George scored a pushover try to put them fourteen up, followed by another penalty to take it way past three scores.
Meanwhile, we had butchered two tries before Flats scored in the corner in the 79th minute. Still twelve points down and time was just about up. There was a kick-off to receive and an outside possibility of coming away with two bonus points, though.
Unfortunately, we coughed the ball up and Sarries saw their chance of a bonus point of their own. Dug was shown red for a second yellow card and then, six minutes past the eighty, Daly rubbed salt into the wound with their fourth try and Lozowski poured hot oil on it by kicking the touchline conversion.
It was a painful watch…
The phrase ‘curate’s egg’ could have been invented for this performance. Take Sam Bedlow: did so much right but overcooked a pass and fumbled a relatively simple gather to miss out on two nailed-on tries. On the other hand, his contribution to Gus’s try was inspired and vital. Dugdale was everywhere as usual but still had a couple of brain farts that resulted in a red card. I believe that a red from two technical yellows doesn’t carry any further sanction, so he should be available against Gloucester.
But it still comes back to discipline: fifteen penalties to nine. And this is too, too consistent for it to be down to referees treating us more harshly or other teams less harshly. I’ve been opining on this matter for so long that I’m thinking of setting up a keyboard shortcut to insert a standard rant about the indiscipline that leads to a loss of initiative or failure to consolidate a good position. I’m fed up with that heart-sink that accompanies a promising attack or good defensive stint being cut short as the ref’s arm goes up pointing to the opposition.
No more, please. Cut out the silly penalties and we’ll beat anyone. Keep giving them away and we’ll struggle against the top teams.
Special mention this week to Asher and Tumy. The future is bright with those two coming on nicely.
So, two rounds in and we’ve faced two of our rivals for the top positions. A scrappy arm-wrestle of a win against one and a defeat—the margin of which flattered the victors—against the other. No bonus points so far, but I maintain my view that wins are more important. Yes, a couple of points against Sarries would have been good but it would only have seen us two places higher and, at this stage of the season, you can go from top to bottom and back again faster than a frog on a pogo stick.
We now have two home games against teams that are not expected to be troubling the scorers this season and we really have to come out of those games well in credit. Yes, there was a bit of a try-fest down at Ashton Gate this week but that’s what you get when you have two teams with no defence to speak of. I think I’ve said before that, if you want to watch two teams take turns to score, go and watch basketball. I like a bit of competition in the games I watch.
Gloucester should find it less easy on a Friday night in Salford against a team that, I sincerely hope, is smarting badly after Saturday.
SAMP™ agrees:
| Sale | Gloucester | |
|---|---|---|
| SAMP-5 | 24 | 18 |
| SAMP-10 | 27 | 19 |
And a try bonus would be the cherry on top…
an old grey dog 