Friday night-Knights.
Influential
By Wildwillie
October 2 2012
Hot on the heels of the crushing defeat at Kingston Park last week, the squad faces Doncaster Knights at Headingley Carnegie at 8pm this coming Friday. The lads will need no reminder of the score in the corresponding fixture last season so can we erase the memory with a solid win?.......
First of all what is a solid win? Well not a 5 tries each shoot out like we had against Bristol. A winning bonus point , restricting the opposition to a consolation try would get my vote. Then we just need to string a few solid wins together. The nature of the Championship means that is not easy. The fixture list is a minefield. Potential wins are also potential bananaskins. So where does this leave Friday's game? Until last weekend I had us down for a solid win. Then Doncaster got a creditable draw against the Pirates and we went down to a crushing defeat at the Falcons. Was that just a blip? Did DE rest key players because he thought that we could not win that game?
The Falcons are, in my opinion, the strongest team in this league by some distance. They restricted our, until now, free-scoring attack to one try. It is unlikely that Doncaster will be so mean. What is likely is that we will concede more points than we ought to so I will measure our progress on Friday by the number of tries that we concede. Anything more than a brace for Donny will be seen as a backward step (always assuming that we manage to score a few ourselves).
Like us the Knights saw a lot of changes in the close season with centres Burdon and Goss moving to Headingley. They also picked up Tincknell and Barrett from Leeds. Former Leeds backrow man Andy Boyde is also a Knight. Last week's result against the Pirates suggests that the new Knights are starting to settle in. Will they be looking for their first win of the season on Friday? Of course they will! The more pertinent question is will we gift them that win?
If DE selects his strongest side and bench then we ought to be too strong for Doncaster. A bonus point win is on the cards. Am I counting my chickens before they are hatched? Er...yes!
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012:10:15:07:55:34 by Wildwillie .
If we are allowed to play (the type of rugby we seem to produce for 40ish minutes, Newcastle notwithstanding) then we should win.
However, Doncaster do seem to be a bit of a bogey team. So who knows.
It'll be exciting - especially if wee Stevie goes over the white line against his old lot.
Miserati - and Proud to be!
I wasn't born in Yorkshire but I got here as soon as I could
This game has the feel of a 'must win' about it for me. A morale boosting win is definately needed after last week.
I think we'll do it and predict a bonus point win.
Quote:Bobba
Leeds to win by a whisker.
What do I know? More than a whisker, more of a moustache and were it not for the points conceded, could have been a full set.