So where is Fortress VR?

By Alan Carter
September 27 2004

After Sunday's performance we have to say nowhere. We lacked imagination and leadership. When we had possession, for the majority of the time we went anywhere other than forward.

We appear to have forgotten even the basic skills,
ball not going to hand, bad passes, etc., and our penalty count is one
of the reasons why we are losing. Giving away points when we are not
scoring tries is always going to lead us into trouble.

The entire experience seemed to remind me of slapstick comedy. You know
the type, where the guy manages not to slip on the banana skin he has
just stepped on, in our case Wuss, and still congratulating himself and
not looking where he is going promptly steps on a banana skin he has
not seen and ends up on his behind, in this case the banana skin was
Leeds. Big laughs all a round, except no Sarries fans were laughing.

For a game we should have won, we appear to be doing what we used to
do. In some magical way, we seem to play at the same level as the
opposition and then for some totally unknown reason, at least to us fans, nose
dive below that level and count ourselves lucky when we pick up a
losing bonus point.

The last time we lost to Leeds at home, at least we could blame the
weather as contributing to that loss, but we can not even do that this
time. I suppose several years back we would have counted ourselves lucky
not to have given Leeds the bonus point for scoring four or more tries
as well. If our close win over Wuss should have taught has anything, it
was that no team was going to be an easy touch this season. It's a pity
we appeared not to have learnt that lesson.

If our defence is improving and I believe it is. For something we are
supposedly taking pride in, Leeds second try does not even bare thinking
about. The way our defence parted would have made Moses proud and I
believe Cecil B. De Mille's could not have directed it better if he had
filmed the game. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on De Mille's, I'm sure we
would have got the full treatment of singing angels, the ground opening
up and swallowing our players, etc.

To badly paraphrase Clausewitz and Douglas Adams, 'The best laid plans
of mice and men go out the window when they come into contact with the
opposition'. If our plan is working, brilliant, but when it goes pear
shape you have two choices either; get the plan to work or adapt to the
changing conditions and come up with something that will work. I
believe we should have recognised early on in the first half that the plan of
attack was not working and adopted a new one.

If we fail to adapt on the field, and the plan is not working then we
are in danger of adopting a 'Somme' mind set to our play, which
basically means just trying the same thing over and over again in the hope that
it will work usually with nothing coming from it. If you keep going
with the same plan of attack the opposition get used to it and adapt, and
Leeds are not anything, if not good in defence.

I hope Rod Kafer is right about us suffering from a hangover after our
win against Wasps, but it is proving to be a long hangover and we
appeared very jittery on Sunday. I hope we are not suffering from the DTs,
because if we are for a team that has aspires to playing HC Rugby next
season we are looking at probably ending up no higher than ninth place
this season.