Anglo Welsh Cup - 10 November, 2009
Gloucester 25 - Cardiff 26
Another loss and more injuries
Cir Mhor Reports
There was a period in the first half when I briefly thought that we had turned the corner: the Cardiff scrum was creaking badly, and we’d scored two tries, and I even harboured thoughts of a bonus point win. However, it then all fell apart through a succession of the same old errors; missed tackles, poor passes and amateurish handling. It also featured more than a smattering of sheer stupidity, the sort than you’d never hope to see from a professional outfit.
The sort of stupidity that saw Freddie Burns illustrate why Redpath resisted the calls to play him at 15 in the Premiership. He made numerous errors, and then midway through the second half, resisted an opportunity to clear our lines in favour of trying to run past Gareth Thomas. The ageing Welshman may be getting on, and may have lost some of his pace, but he had more than enough guile to nail Burns, who then hung onto the ball and gave away a soft penalty. Not content with that, he injured himself in the process. It didn’t cost us the game, but it was daftness of the worst kind.
If you want another example, try this one. With 50 seconds left on the clock and Glaws two points behind, we have a restart. The only, repeat only, sensible thing to do was put up a short drop-out that our pack could chase and compete for – even then we’re hoping for a penalty and a miracle. What mustn’t happen is a long kick giving uncontested possession to Cardiff. I’ll leave you to recall what we did! They formed a maul, ran the clock down and hoofed it off the park. This is a genuine question: do we have the brains within the squad to actually make sensible decisions when we’re under pressure?
In the first half our pack was dominant at scrum time, and I hope that it was injury that led to Doran-Jones being replaced, because if it was tactical it was a dreadful error of judgement. Without him suddenly Cardiff had parity and it was a different ball game.
The positives, such as they were, included some lovely runs from Spencer, but as was often the case in his Northampton days, his support players weren’t on the same wavelength as him. In the first half the front five did well, and Henry Trinder showed enough to make me think he’s Premiership quality. Vainikolo is putting together some decent form, especially on the occasions we use him properly. Beyond that we huffed and puffed but were very poor.
The biggest negative for me was once again at 9: loads of effort, fantastic in defence, but I despair of us ever getting quick ball, or of a fast, flat pass being thrown. With the kind of service that Lawson is delivering we’re always going to struggle.
It’s hard to know what to say beyond that, other than that I’ve gone beyond disappointment with this squad and coaching set-up, and anger is the prevailing emotion. Having watched Tigers amazing performance against the ‘Boks, you can’t help but fear for what might happen in two week’s time when the proper rugby starts again. I’m afraid that time is running out for the coaches and for some of the players, and unless we see some dramatic improvement there will surely be blood on the carpets at Kingsholm. |
