What a Waste of Time

Idon’t know what it is about Friday evenings at Headingley, (think Sale, Pirates, Rotherham), but on a miserable night, Yorkshire Carnegie lost ground in the race to the play offs with a dreadful performance against London Welsh.  

The home team started brightly, a strong run by Holmes followed by another from Burrows, and with a couple of deft touches from Sinfield, the signs were promising, but from then on it went downhill.

It was a niggly stop, start game with constant re-setting of the scrum, and as half time approached the scoreboard hadn’t been disturbed, although the visitors had missed 3 kicks at goal, compared to Carnegies one. Then with two minutes remaining Welsh spread the ball wide and from 30 yards Chris Elder ran strongly through some poor defending and crossed close enough to the posts for Joel Carlise to add on the extras. In terms of territory and ball retention, it was a lead they just about deserved.

If we thought the first half was bad, we were in for a shock in part two. Taylor Prell was hit by a vicious high tackle which went unpunished, and the bout of handbags which followed was possibly the highlight of the half. Neither try line was threatened, and when the ball was pushed back to Carlisle he effortlessly dropped a goal to give the visitors a ten point cushion.

When Yorkshire did have the ball, they managed to find different ways to cough it up, and at almost every stoppage, half of the NHS appeared on the pitch to attend to an injured visiting player. They then strolled around the pitch, and held team meetings prior to every scrum and line out. They then introduced a new time wasting tactic to me. Wait until an opponent’s replacement gets into position, and with the game about to restart, bring on a replacement of your own. It all made for a frustrating and disjointed game, and Carnegie were not good enough to find a way through it all.

With only a few minutes remaining, my colleague said that ‘nil’ flattered the home side, but with two minutes showing on the clock, Joel Hodgson scampered across the whitewash, and hastily tagged on the conversion. There was, unsurprisingly a fair amount of added time, but Yorkshire messed up a scrum and a line out close to the visitors’ line, and the game was lost.

A poor game, and few home players came out of it with any credit. Dudman did little wrong, and Beck put in a good shift, as did Lucock when he came on after the interval, but I’m going to share this week’s bubbly between Jonah Holmes and Ryan Burrows They at least looked to provide some sort of escape route when they had the ball.

It was a shame the game played out as it did. With a crowd of 3.672, the chance to impress the new supporters went out of the window. Mr. Wigglesworth wasn’t responsible for the result, but surely he has to take responsibility for the way he allowed the game to be played.