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Author Topic: Terrible 2nd half defence against relegation fodder (better?)  (Read 3486 times)

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rdc

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Just managed to catch the extended highlights (didn’t want to comment without seeing some of it for myself).

I think context is important. We’d effectively had a month off so I think there was almost certainly an element of rustiness. The defence didn’t look great, but reading through the thread, Worcester haven’t been given a great deal of credit. Some of their tries were very good (Adams’ in particular) and where as much to do with a good attack and quality offloading as they were with our defence.

PG’s had our defence working really well up until now, so I’d back him to fix it pretty quickly. As others have said, this is effectively an ideal opportunity for him to b*llock the team in a situation where we still managed to pick up 5 points.

One question - it looked like Dombrandt and Smith went off early 50 something minutes in. Is it coincidence that we got worse after they went off or not?

I’ve also only seen the extended highlights, but absolutely agree that Worcester scored some classy tries with 1st class offloading.

We should have defended better, but, let’s give them some credit.   We will know much more next week.  I’m still feeling good.  Very few of us expected us to be realistically hoping to make top 4 this season

Quinston Churchill

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The next few weeks are huge for us.

We can’t afford to be complacent, but we are definitely capable of picking up another bonus point win over Bristol. Bath at the Rec will be a tougher proposition, but if we’re going to start winning on the road, we need to be beating our immediate competition.

Safri-quin

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The next few weeks are huge for us.

We can’t afford to be complacent, but we are definitely capable of picking up another bonus point win over Bristol. Bath at the Rec will be a tougher proposition, but if we’re going to start winning on the road, we need to be beating our immediate competition.

At event last week, PG seemed to be focussing on winning all home games, and viewed picking up bonus points on the road, as acceptable at the moment.

TomBuckQuin

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I was watching Gabs very closely in defence all game, as I too have been concerned, but I actually thought he was much-improved. Sure, maybe that's not saying much, but I thought if anything that Earle was worse than Gabs in defence yesterday - got absolutely skinned on a couple of occasions. He reminds me a bit of Ugo - his top-end, straight-line pace is great, but it takes him sooo long to get going. I don't know how much acceleration you can 'add' in training but it's one thing I feel he needs to work on. Don't get me wrong, he's still our best all-round winger - I'd just love to see him be able to fly off the mark. It let him down yesterday.

Overall, though, I left The Stoop feeling a bit disappointed (not quite as intensely as Blucher) that it definitely felt like a step backwards defensively. It doesn't really matter how great Worcester's backs are supposed to be - we looked ropey from the off. However, we got away with it and I'm happy to chalk it up as a one-off rusty game after a long period without any serious competitive game time for most of those guys. Maybe letting them go off on holiday backfired slightly? Either way, I expect Gussy to give them a right kick up the derriere in training this week and hopefully we won't see that again...

Gone

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It's that step back that got me so annoyed and worried.

And because our group all said at half time that we can't let our foot off and that if we're turning into a good side we'll punish them now and not let them back on the scoreboard barring the odd penalty - then the deluge...

Anyway can't wait for Saturday. Harder team to get a TBP against but here's hoping.

Quinky

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Just watched the highlights. Some nice offloading play by Worcester. Have to say though - Gabs has got some serious acceleration.

dittonquin

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I was watching Gabs very closely in defence all game, as I too have been concerned, but I actually thought he was much-improved. Sure, maybe that's not saying much, but I thought if anything that Earle was worse than Gabs in defence yesterday - got absolutely skinned on a couple of occasions. He reminds me a bit of Ugo - his top-end, straight-line pace is great, but it takes him sooo long to get going. I don't know how much acceleration you can 'add' in training but it's one thing I feel he needs to work on. Don't get me wrong, he's still our best all-round winger - I'd just love to see him be able to fly off the mark. It let him down yesterday.

Overall, though, I left The Stoop feeling a bit disappointed (not quite as intensely as Blucher) that it definitely felt like a step backwards defensively. It doesn't really matter how great Worcester's backs are supposed to be - we looked ropey from the off. However, we got away with it and I'm happy to chalk it up as a one-off rusty game after a long period without any serious competitive game time for most of those guys. Maybe letting them go off on holiday backfired slightly? Either way, I expect Gussy to give them a right kick up the derriere in training this week and hopefully we won't see that again...

Agree with this, Tom. Nothing Gabs could do for the disallowed try in the first half as it was 2 on 1. The first Heem try Quins then didn't get the numbers right and again left him 2 on 1. Their 4th try I think was mainly caused by Boyce slipping off the tackle which then allowed them to break through. After that they had men over and Gabs was again stranded. I do think he doesn't fully commit to the tackle sometimes and that's a bit of a worry but hopefully that can be worked on.

In contrast on the 5th try Earle didn't do enough to get back to Adams and was too easily handed off. There was a similar incident earlier in the second half where as you say Earle took ages to get up to full speed and only just got back to Adams.

I had the same feeling of a really poor finish when leaving the ground but when watching things back I think Worcester just threw caution to the wind a lot in the second half and some risky offloads worked out for them on two of the tries when on other occasions the ball might have gone down. That was then compounded by Quins falling off a couple of key tackles. Hopefully the strong finish from Worcs means they'll be on it for next weekend.

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never sleep

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I think that you get this sort of thing when a team targets a losing bonus point instead of a win.
Basically, their mindset was probably - don't care about defence or letting in tries.  Just concentrate on getting 4 tries. 

When Taps scored, I thought it looked a bit too easy.  But Worcs may have thought - let them score and then get the ball quickly down the other end.

raedarius

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Two Worcester tries were while we were down to 14 men.  The first Worcester try was while we were on a warning that the next red zone infringement was going to be a card (IIRC), so I can understand that one.  I don't get why defenders don't keep running and try to drive the potential try scorer off the back of the pitch though.

 

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