LV Cup - 30 January, 2010
Gloucester 17 - Worcester 5
Woeful Wuss Sent Packing
If I was Cecil Duckworth – I wish I had his money – I’d surely be wondering about how effective Mike Ruddock and his coaching team are. This Wuss side was the worst team I’ve seen at CG for a long, long time, and quite how a bunch of talented players can produce such dross has to be one of life’s mysteries.
For any Glaws fan unhappy with our recent form, take a look up the M5 as things could be much, much worse. If Wuss don’t get relegated then Leeds must be unutterably bad.
Just as when we met them a few weeks ago, Wuss were devoid of ideas other than defend like hell and kick the ball away – I bet that Chris Latham can’t wait to escape back to Oz where he will, presumably, be encouraged to play a different kind of game. In the desperately disappointing draw a few weeks ago, we squandered goodness knows how many chances, and it was more of the same today in some respects. The difference was that our dominance was even greater on Saturday, and we took enough chances to make victory a certainty from the end of the first quarter.
Glaws were slowly into their stride, which was hardly surprising considering the unfamiliar look to the side that we fielded – Wuss, in contrast weren’t too badly affected by call-ups and, on paper looked to be a strong outfit. However, once things settled down, Glaws were simply the better side in pretty well all respects.
As our esteemed leader said in his excellent programme notes, goodness knows how the LV Cup works, so rather than fret about that, let’s simply focus on what Glaws did well and less well.
There were some excellent performances from Glaws players. Freddie Burns played at 15 and looked accomplished in the position – the lad shows a lot of class. Rather than force Tom Voyce to play at 15 I think the time might be right to play Burns there when Olly Morgan is injured or away.
Dave Lewis might not yet the answer to the scrum-half dilemma, but I thought that he was better than he has been this season – Brush is probably right when he says that it takes a long time to come back fully from an injury as severe as the one he had at the end of last season. Incidentally, the arm-flapping Wuss 9 looked like he was in training for the Bognor Birdman competition for most of the game – I hate it when scrum-halfs spend their time doing that rather than simply digging out the ball!
My other stars for Glaws were Gareth Delve who wasn’t letting the uncertainty about his future – assuming it isn’t already decided – play on his mind, and Tim Molenaar who once again added the directness that we lacked earlier in the season.
The negatives were that we again blew no end of chances and really should have won by 30+ points, and the lack of concentration we showed once the game was one. The next step for Glaws is to clinically dispose of poor competition when we encounter it – Wuss should have been ‘nilled’, and we should have had five points from the game. Just as against NGD the week before, we gave away what some would call a consolation score, but which others would describe as an inexcusable lapse. The last two weekends it hasn’t mattered but the players’ job was to humiliate Wuss rather than simply beat them, and they had the chance to do it.
Basic skills continue to be a worry. Loads of opportunities were created, only to flounder when the ball was lost in contact, or simply dropped – I bet Charlie Sharples didn’t sleep well last night after miss of the season!
It was good to see some old and new faces on the park: Yann Thomas did well, and our new 10, Tim Taylor showed a flash that was enough to make one think he might be OK. Semi Tadulala didn’t get much of an opportunity to shine, but we learned that he’s a typically robust Fijian! It was great to see Marco back and with the Italian clubs having been shafted by the Celts, I hope that he gets a contract offer from Glaws and stays. He was a class player for us once, and I can’t see any reason why he can’t regain that form.
So, 7 out of 10 for Glaws – the winning run continued, and that was what really mattered, apart from the pleasure of seeing Worcester heading back homewards, “tae think again”! Balance has been restored and last season’s losses to the pretenders in blue and gold can be seen for what they were: temporary aberrations!
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