Close, but no cigar. (Again)!!!
By PcPete999
October 30 2011
I preface this match report by letting you know that I attended thisgame with my four year old daughter Hattie, so no notes were taken,and I do not have ESPN to watch the game back, therefore this maybecome less of a match 'report', and more my observations and musingson the game.
First up, I attended the match with Bath at home last season, and as a reminder, these were my thoughts after
that late, late defeat...
So to this weekend's match, and I arrived at the ground feeling in all honesty, very confident about out chances of righting a record that has not seen us beat Bath at home in the league since the 2006/07 season. Any slight concerns that I had about a lack of ball carrying options in our pack, were tempered by the form of Dan Bowden, and the ability of the players outside him to fashion chances for nothing.
On our arrival, we headed for the Digger Pound, where Hattie had her face painted and transformed into a beautiful butterfly, along with the obligatory high fives with Digger, before heading round towards our seats, with a quick stop for Hattie to tell Eek that he is 'The Music Man'.
Having reached our seats in West Stand, the teams were coming out to warm up, and I was struck by how intense and fired up some of our guys looked. Now in some regards this is a good thing, as you want them focused and ready to go to battle, but in contrast to them Bath looked relaxed to me intheir warm up, and that was the first point at which I started to become concerned at how the match may pan out.
So to the actual game, and although difficult to tell from row B in the stand it looks to me as if the entire Bath team is offside at almost every breakdown, and Darren Allinson seems to be suffering as a result. We need quick ball and it is not forthcoming, with Darren
scragged a couple of times early on and Bath seemingly making a complete mess of the breakdown.
Our first lineout comes, and David Paice misses. Now that is a concern. I never worry about our lineout, but when he misses again the next time, the alarm bells are starting to ring in my head. The scrum however is the opposite. I always worry, but today, as last week, our scrum is on top, and Max is looking very destructive on the loosehead side. Maybe we will get a platform to play from after all.
The first chance for points however goes to Bath, but Vesty fails to get any distance on a kick that he really should slot, and the game continues with scores level.
We seem to be lacking penetration during the opening stages, and that is compounded when one of our most potent attacking threats leaves the field injured after 18 minutes. I understand it is a shoulder injury
for JJ, and we all wish him a speedy recovery, and hope to see him back on the field in the very near future. Now, far be it from me to question Toby and Catty's decision making, but I must confess to being surprised to see Shingler run onto the field as a replacement. As far as I know, he's never played 13 at any level, whereas we have 2 players ont he field who have in Tom and Delon. For me it had to be one of them into midfield, with Adam coming into the back three, but it is what it is now, and the game moves on.
The best assessment I can give of the first half is that is was scrappy, and my overiding feeling was that we lacked composure in our play. With Bath making a mess of the breakdown, we seemed to try to regain composure by taking an age waiting at the back of the ruck and ensuring our attacking alignment is right. We never play well when we do this. The players, particularly darren and Dan, should have trusted their ability and just played, without panic, but with pace.
This however didn't happen, and we never really looked like crossing the whitewash, despite spending long periods in the Bath half of the field.
With 32 minutes on the clock, we hit what was probably a key moment in the game. I was sat level with the 22, at that end, on that side of the pitch, in row B, so was no more than 10-15 yards from the 'tackle' by Delon. It sounded terrible, he really hit him with some force, and I am sure that Biggs was in some serious discomfort as a result. My initial impression having watched in real time was that Biggs stepped
and appeared to slip slightly which brought his head lower than it would ordinarily be. Had he not, Delon would have connected across the upper part of his chest and it was unfortunate that he caught him in the head instead.
A Bath fan near me is screaming that it was disgraceful, but I think that may have more to do with a perception of Delon and his previous record than the actual tackle, although in fairness, it did look and
sound bad, and Sir had little choice but to brandish the yellow card.
Now it would be unfair to say to say that being a man short cost us the game, but I genuinely don't feel that Bath had looked likely to score up until that point. whether it was confidence that they could get over with a man short, or a lack of confidence in Vesty's kicking
at goal, they go for the corner, and a few phases on from the resulting lineout score in the opposite corner of the pitch as we run out of numbers in the defensive line. Vesty missed the extras, and at half time it's 0-5.
Whatever was said in the dressing room at half time, it appears to have had some effect, as in the early exchanges of the second half, our breakdown work was a lot better, although Darren seemed to still take an age getting the ball away, which is worrying, as we are never going to score tries without quick ball to play from. We do however pick up two penalties, which Tom converts, and with 10 minutes gone in the second half we are finally in front.
Now, again Toby is obviously paid to make decisions and I am not, but I couldn't understand the logic of bringing Max off, even if it was to bring on a player of the quality of Corbs. Max had sepnt most of the
game shoving the Bath tightheads head up his own backside in the scrum, and ceratinly didn't look tired or injured from where I was sitting, and was one of the few ball carriers who seemed to be getting some joy when carrying into traffic.
Now the brief story of the rest of the game was that Dave Attwood scored a try in the corner, and Tom kicked two more penalties to put us 12-10 up with 5 minutes to go. At that point, my heart was in my mouth remember ing las t seasons defeat, and so it transpired again,
as a penalty was conceded and Vesty stepped up to nudge Bath ahead again with about a minute on the clock. Now I have read various comments on The Craic stating that it was a very harsh penalty indeed, but from where I was sat, there is no way I could see, and therefore
cannot comment.
So that was it, and despite some effort to fashion a late drop goal chance, we fell short again, and picked up our fourth LBP of the season. That may be key in the final count up, with lots of teams suffering the same inconsistencies as us, but wins would be better,
especially at home.
The reasons for losings also need to be addressed, and although games can be poured over in minute detail by the coaching staff, the five key areas from yesterday that we have to improve on were the breakdown, the lineout, decision making, composure and ball carrying.
If you lok at the decision to take another scrum in the seocnd half when we had an easily kickable penalty, some might say that we were dominating that area of the game, so it was a decision that could easily have gained us 7 points. You have to however factor in the
inconsitencies of referees at the set piece when making your decision, and the fact that it was such a tight gain, and you know Tom will score means that you have to go for 3 points at that juncture. It was one of many decisions by the team and the coaching staff that I did not understand yesterday.
The ball carrying is a worry. Without Garvey and the Hoff in the pack, we look lightweight, and very rarely threatened to get across the gainline and put Bath on the back foot. Topsy was our only back that looked like breaking through, and with out the heavyweights that we are missing up front, the rest of the backs need to find ways of getting through gaps if we are going to be successful.
Positives for me are that we at least got the LBP despite not playing well, the form of Max Lahiff (although we could have done with either him or Corbs making their name on the other side of the scrum really), and the knowledge that we have a points machine in Tom Homer.
I was feeling pretty gloomy last night after the game, as we have some big games coming up that could shape our season and it would have been nice to go into them off the back of a win and in good form, but thems
the breaks, and we are where we are. Hopefully the players can pick themselves up and really take it to the Tigers at Welford Road next week. Let's get behind them, and hopefully this season will be success for us all.
I leave the final thoughts on the match to my middle daughter Hattie who was my companion for the day, and they were these...
1. 'Daddy, if that man (a Bath supporter sat near us) shouts rude words again when Tom is doing a kick I am going to put him on the naughty step'.
2. 'Why have we got Topsy in our team and not Tim?'
3. 'I love Digger and I want to wave my flag.'
4. 'Where's Big Bob? I want to see Big Bob.' (where indeed? leadership anyone?)
and
5. 'Did we win?' (No sweetheart, but maybe we will next week.)
COME ON YOU IRISH!!!
If you do not already have an account Click here to Register.
Frustrating match to watch - thanks for the report
Your scrum half Allinson wasn't allowed to settle all game which was down to Claassens' great work at the breakdown, of course there will be murmurs from parts of the Irish board that 'of course he was was offside for the whole game'...!!
Dave Attwood's try was incredibly well taken.
Basically your whole report is based around Irish's dominance of the game. My favourite part was where you said "Now it would be unfair to say to say that being a man short cost us the game, but I genuinely don't feel that Bath had looked likely to score up until that point." Bath had the upper hand for large parts of the first half and were camped on Irish's line more than once in that half.
I was also the report writer, and although I'm by no means a neutral, I feel I at least gave a fairer reflection of the game.
I don't mean this as a personal insult, I was just shocked when I read your report, perhaps all of Irish's reports are solely focussed on Irish's performance and not the game as a whole, in which case I'm sorry.
I have had read of your report which is very detailed. Clearly you had notes to work from or a recording of the game. Either that or you have a photographic memory for the details of the match. In any case it is a good match report.
Whichever is the case, I will reiterate the point I made at the start of mine, that I had none of the above, and it was going to be less a match report and more my observations of the game. In making my observations I am in the main doing so for the benefit of the London Irish fans on this board, and therefore did not feel that they would have any real interest in my observations of Bath.
For what it is worth, my observation is that yes, whilst you did have a spell in the first half where you were camped on our line, I genuinely didn't feel that you looked like scoring at that time. Our defence in my eyes was pretty comfortable at that stage.
I don't feel that at any point I have said that we dominated the game, and I am not sure where you have gleaned that from. I have talked about our lineout failing to operate, our breakdown work not being great and us lacking penetration. You interpretation of that is more than likely that it happened because Bath did not allow us to be better in those areas. That may have some merit, but my points are directed at London Irish fans and are intended to explore how we can improve.
I have not sought to take anything away from your team, who came, and left with a deserved victory, sorry if you feel affronted by what I have said then I do apologise, but as I have said, I wrote this report for fellow London Irish fans on the London Irish forum.
Best of luck for the rest of the season.
It's your report, not anyone else's. As such you have absolutely NOTHING to apologise about to anyone.
I liked your report Pete and as Bisach says it is YOUR report and how you saw the match it does not matter about how anyone else saw it. Thank you for taking the time and effort to do it.
As for Hattie's observations, spot on!
faramir, thank you for your kind words, I do read my own board. I was just interested to see what the Irish board had to say of the game...
timmeh!
Too fat to live, too lazy to die!