International Friendly - Tuesday 3 November, 2009
Gloucester 5 - Australia 36
Great Evening - Not So Great Result
What a cracking night! A touring team play the Cherry and Whites under floodlights and in front of a sell-out crowd – well done to the management of Glaws for making this happen!
In a rugby sense we didn’t learn too much with the jet-lagged Aussies not really having to move much out of third gear against a young Glaws side – our team was pretty well what our ‘A’ side would look like if Brush didn’t have injuries with which to contend. That said, they gave it a proper go and all concerned come out of it with huge credit.
The highlight for me was the performance of the Gloucester pack. Remember, we have another virtually full international pack on the sidelines through injury, suspension and international call-ups, so this was an opportunity for some fringe players to make their mark. I put my hand up as being one of those most on Carl Hogg’s case, but the past few weeks have seen a huge improvement in the competitiveness of the Gloucester forwards, and Tuesday night continued that pattern.
Paul Doran-Jones, he who was ‘hyped’ beyond belief by one of our number after a pre-season appearance, showed that he indeed is a decent scrummager, and he looked powerful in the loose. It’s not yet time to get carried away, because who knows what opposition he really faced on Tuesday, and the GP will bring much, much tougher tests, but on what we’ve seen in recent weeks he’s a player with a future. Similarly, Capdevielle and Dawaduik did well and the Aussie scrum was under a fair bit of pressure throughout – pressure that didn’t always produce the number of penalties it might have done.
We also saw an Aussie hooker who would make Olly’s line out throwing look immaculate – I reckon he was pinged for not straight at the line-out no less than seven times! However, the player who impressed me most was Dave Attwood when he came on. The guy is a leader, and he wasn’t afraid to make his presence felt – before one line-out his roar of ‘Wake Up!’ to one of his colleagues put the fear of God in me and I was thirty yards away! He’s the best of our new signings and, if he can keep things on track, looks to be a future Glaws captain – who knows, maybe sooner rather than later?
Captain for the night was Jake Boer who managed the whole 80 minutes and did well. In the back row we also had Qera and then late on Satala, and both look to be shadows of the players we have previously seen – work needs to be done to get them back to their best.
The backs were enthusiastic, but showed their inexperience, and for me showed why Bryan Redpath has resisted calls to chuck them in at the deep end in the GP. Too many tackles were missed, too many passes were dropped or simply never found their target, and compared with the Australian backs, it was men against boys.
The evening also illustrated that we have three scrum-halves at Gloucester who all have real problems with their pass. Redpath reckons that Dave Lewis will regain his form after his injury, and he needs to, as no side can look good with the level of service currently being provided – when he was replaced by Pasqualin things got no better. If there is one area where action needs to be taken, it’s at 9.
I thought Henry Trinder looked a good prospect in the early part of the game before fading out of things, and he seems sure to get his first-team opportunities, but I’m still not sure about Tim Molenaar.
Similarly, Charlie Sharples has lightning pace but defensively still has a lot to learn. I thought that Tom Voyce did well back in his proper position – oh that Lewis had managed to throw that pass so we could see what Voyce could do from 60m out.
A word about King Carlos. He’s getting on and isn’t the player he was, but I promise you he would have looked a lot better with players who were running onto passes rather than crabbing sideways across the pitch. He may be a light of former days, but he still has much more to offer than he was able could show with our moderate backs outside him.
The thing that impressed me most about the visitors was their slick off-loading game – it enabled them to turn defence into attack in a flash, just as we’ve seen the likes of Northampton, Irish and Wasps do to us this season.
My big worry is that this was Wasps all over again: lots of Glaws territory, possession, pride in the jersey, and pressure, all undone by a simple missed tackle or basic error. Furthermore, the game illustrated just how intense GP and HC rugby is, and with players on both sides intent on avoiding injury, beware of drawing any meaningful conclusions from what was, nevertheless, a hugely enjoyable evening out.
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