Up and Under: Luke Myring's Coventry RFC column.

From the first minute, the game was never in doubt as our outstanding scrum took Barking apart early on and continued to do so throughout the whole game. Because of our recent form I think we played the game very cautiously, which was understandable but in the end maybe cost us the bonus point. However the most important thing, NO, the only important thing was the win and now we can put the last few weeks behind us and start moving forward and building on the performance from the weekend.

As we managed to get back on course the English sides in Europe showed us that maybe for English rugby the ship has sailed! Only Gloucester performed to a good level at the weekend and although our ‘South African franchise’, Saracens, managed to beat Italy’s equivalent, Treviso, to be the only ‘English’ side through, they looked void of ideas like the rest of our teams.

We have many, many outstanding players in England and I really hope that this year is just a blip for our sides. I think the problem stems from our salary cap which means our clubs are finding it increasingly hard to compete with the free-spending French clubs and also the regional franchises which compete in the Celtic League. I think most of the English clubs have a strong first team but when there have been injuries they just haven’t seemed to have the strength in depth which is required to battle for trophies both domestically and against the big powers in Europe.

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