Away Day Blues Continue
I don’t know what to make of this game. There have been times this season when I felt that we should have won but didn’t, but I can’t, in all honesty, say that about today. We could have won it but did we deserve to – I’m not sure?
I also resolved that this was one not to read Shedweb before writing the report, as I reckon there will be lots of different interpretations of the match and the result, but sometimes you simply have to say it as you saw it. This certainly wasn’t one for making judgements based on the Radio Glaws commentary – you had to be there to see it for yourself.
The first thing to say is that this was a cracking game of rugby, and Northampton are a different proposition at home to when they travel – just as we are! For me, they deserved to win, but not by as much as they eventually did – this match was much closer than the score suggests.
Now to why we lost, and I fully expect to be lambasted for my view on this. I think the key weaknesses in the Glaws performance were the backs, and in particular the half-backs.
I’m a Ryan Lamb fan but his first quarter performance was woeful. His first touch was a clumsy knock on, and then his aimless kicking from hand set up a Saints try. Overall his kicking was dire: every kick went straight into the arms of a Northampton defender, and his place kicking was wide of the mark – just. Had the two which hit the posts gone over then it might have been different, but they didn’t – the mindless local DJ made some sort of a tasteless remark about hitting the left and right posts and there only being the crossbar left. He should have been taken out and shot…the commentator, not Lambie.
While Lamb was missing, Myler wasn’t, and that was a big factor in the end. In the second quarter Lamb started to play, and he showed some lovely touches, including a fine pass to set up Foster’s try – he’s never been my favourite player but he took his score well. I’m no fan of Rory Lawson and again, for me, he didn’t shine – it’s hard for any 10 to look good on the end of his pass, and Cooper put some urgency into matters when he came on late in the game.
Until that point I’d been of the view that we could only score through the pack, and our first two tries came from them. After being mullered in a scrum, we bravely took that option from a penalty and it proved to be dead right – although we nearly blew it until we got a somewhat fortuitous charge down. The second came from Will James after an awesome charge by Qera – thankfully he looked to have recovered the pace and power that was so impressive last season. Although the third score came from the backs, that was about it as far as they were concerned, with fumbles aplenty afterwards and not a lot of penetration.
At half-time we went in just four points down and it was all to play for. When Lamb missed another penalty we had the seminal moment in the match, and the one that’s sure to keep Shedweb buzzing. Lamb was replaced by Spencer – on balance I thought that was the right call –, and to make sure we had a kicker, off went Allen to be replaced by Barkley. To round off the replacements, on came Nieto for Wood. You pays your money and you takes your choice on this one: was it a disastrous decision by Dean Ryan to make such wholesale changes so early in the half? There will be lots of different opinions on that, but I don’t think that was what cost us the game.
For me – but I’m sure others will see it differently – Spencer did well and his kicking from hand found space rather than simply going down the throats of the likes of Reihana. The problem was that we were simply starved of possession for long periods. Too many easy turnovers, and an opposition that was simply better at the breakdown than we were.
Hazell’s sin-binning for stamping didn’t cost us points, but the effort of defending with 14 men was huge. I’d love to see it again as Saints were lying all over the ball and needed to be rucked out – there’s all this talk of how messy the breakdown is nowadays, but a lot of it could be sorted if sides were allowed to ruck the offenders out of the way. Instead, Haze got a yellow card and he was still distraught about it after the game.
The final minutes saw two late tries for Northampton as Glaws chased the game, and their earlier defensive efforts took its toll.
If we’d had Balshaw, Sinbad and Tindall, would we have won? Yes, I believe that we would, and although the likes of Foster, Sharples and Watkins did their best, sadly but unsurprisingly, it wasn’t good enough. To that injury list I think we can add Strokosch who had his arm in a sling after the game and also seemed to have a pretty stiff neck. Our chances against Cardiff, Wuss and Pests are, for me, almost totally predicated on our walking wounded – if some of them return we have a chance in those games, but if they don’t, then I think we’re probably stuffed.
One final point: after the players had changed and came out on the way to the bus, it was interesting to see who was clearly hurting after the defeat, and who was laughing and joking. I reckon you can tell a lot about individuals from their demeanour and it was pretty revealing – although wild horses wouldn’t make me reveal who was in which camp! |
