: Mon Feb 16, 2009 1:39 pm
Righty – after 20 hours or so to reflect:
There were a number of frustrating things yesterday (in no particular order)
1) Mitch's rush of blood to the head at half time!
2) Dixon's apparent inability to convert from the touchline
3) Sione's short kicking game (but then, that's not why we signed him)
4) When the ball went to to right, Sione's apparent need to run to find space with sometimes meant he was nearly the furthest back of our players – so had no one to legally pass to
5) when the ball went to the left (which wasn't often enough imo) Rangi's mazy runs and dummies being followed by a pass behind the players outside him
1) is pretty inexplicable, but not something I'd expect to recur too often
2) we knew about going in to the season – but it is frustrating that with three players with place kicking experience ( Dixon, Westerman, Huby) we can't actually convert enough tries
3) As I said, that's not why we signed him
4 & 5) 10 new players in the first team – it's going to take time for them to gel and get used to each other: with Rangi for instance, I'm not sure whether it's a question of him getting use to the players outside him, the outside players getting used to him and not over-running him, or a mixture of both. But it is something I expect to improve.
But – it was a good defensive performance to hold Quins to two tries (one and intercept when they wouldn't have scored on their own) and remember: if we had someone who could kick consistently from the touchline, we'd have drawn.
And the booing was embarrassing – I get the impression sometimes that people expect teams like Quins (and Catalans in last year's opener?) to be a walkover because they're not 'proper' RL clubs, and never bother to actually look at their strengths.
