Chris Johnson’s exclusive to Sport Network

By Roth Admin
November 19 2003

Chris took time out of his busy schedule to give us a few minutes of his valuable time. We caught up with him after the Powergen Cup defeat at home to Newcastle Falcons last Sunday. Chris speaks about the game and gives us his general thoughts on where Rotherham are at.

We asked Chris for his overall thoughts on the Newcastle game and Chris revealed the following.

“With each progressing week, you can see as a side we are getting better. The new systems and the new practices that Steph the coach is bringing in are bearing fruition.

I think where our problems lie, are lapses in concentration. We put phase after phase of play together and then we turn over the ball and at this level you are punished. And then we get kicked all the way back down in to our half, then we have to start again from scratch. I think it’s these turn-overs that are punishing us.

However as I said, each week we are getting better, we are bringing our game on, we are learning more, we are getting that little bit more street-wise. The only problem is as each week goes on, it’s that little further on in to the season and we are leaving it very late. But there are an awful lot of positives to draw from. As the game went on today, not only did we play better, but in the last 20 minutes, I thought we were the better side.

It’s important now, especially as we get nearer to Christmas that we remain positive and we keep our heads up. And I’m really pleased to say that’s what’s happening. The guys are positive; we are keen to learn we are keen to get better, as the last 25 minutes showed. We are still hungry this season.”

When asked about the resurgence of Rotherham in the last 25/30 minutes of the game, Chris went on, “This is the thing that makes me proud to be at Rotherham. It’s the hunger and it’s the pride and passion that the side has. We went in at half time and we knew we’d let ourselves down, we knew we needed to do better and we came out in the 2nd half and really tried to redress the balance. We were big in defence, we put the phases together and we really kept driving in to Newcastle, which they couldn’t cope with.”


We at Sport Network would like to say a big thank you to Chris Johnson for taking the time to talk to us.