Wake up and smell the coffee!
Easy to score
By WW
November 7 2016
Our Yorkshire Carnegie team was comprehensively beaten at the Madjeski Stadium on Saturday afternoon. The Exiles ran in five tries. Jonah Holmes scored twice but the traffic was mostly one way as our unbeaten league run came to an abrupt end.
London Irish is a good side. The LI players attack well, defend well and do not make overmany unforced errors. The LI squad comprises mainly of players who could not compete in the premiership last season. Despite that they were too good for a team assembled with the second biggest budget in the Championship and which has nearly as many coaches as players.
So what went wrong? Missed chances? Unforced errors? Sloppy tackling? Yep! All of the above and some more. The next question is...what can we do about it? We all know what is wrong. We are not sure why it is going wrong though some of us have our suspicions. However we have a few months to get things right so all is not yet lost. I hope that Bryan Redpath has a clear idea of what he needs to do. If not then may I make a suggestion? Concentrate on our defence. Our points conceded per game is ridiculously high at more than twenty. LI average around eleven points per game conceded. We should aim, in the next four months, to emulate this. We do not appear to have too much trouble scoring against the weaker teams (i.e. everyone except LI) so if our defence improves then we will still win matches.
To my mind we have a talented group of players who have not yet performed, teamwise, to our reasonably moderate expectations. It is not as if they are new to the squad. They have been together three months.
Our next game is at home to 4th placed Doncaster. We should win this game. Donny have scored 50 points less than us and conceded 50 less than us. Will our defence improve? I hope so. If not then Redpath needs to look at what he is doing wrong and sort that out.
The one positive to come out of Saturday's game is that we are now in no doubt as to how good we are as a team. Unfortunately that is not as good as the sum of the individual players. London Irish come to Headingley Carnegie on the first weekend in March next year for the return fixture. Our performance in that game will be a good measure of the progress made (or not) by the coaches in the intervening months.
I am already looking forward to that game.
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2016:11:16:07:45:22 by Wildwillie .
LI seem to have got their act together, and whilst complacency and/or play-off nerves may yet come into play, are deserved odds-on favourites to reclaim a Premiership spot at the first attempt.