Northampton Saints 18 Rotherham Titans 8

By Roth Admin
April 8 2004

Rotherham lost their 15th successive Premiership game of the season, going down by 18 points to 8 away at Northampton Saints. Arguably it was the Titans best display of the campaign so far and for long periods Northampton were trapped in their own 22. Saints Coach Wayne Smith said about Rotherham...

“They played with real passion. You have to take your hat off to Rotherham – they played with real fire. I was surprised that we got out physicaled on our own pitch, that doesn’t happen very often. We knew they had strengthened considerably with the overseas contingent coming in and we were wary of that. I thought they dominated at times and there were periods when I thought we may loose the game. I was grateful we got away with the win – Rotherham put on a great performance.”

Northampton started the better but it was Rotherham who put points on the board first. On 6 minutes Saints drifted offside around their own 22 and Jon Benson made them pay by converting the easy penalty. The lead only lasted 3 minutes as Shane Drahm struck a successful penalty for the hosts – Titans were penalised for not rolling away in the tackle.

Rotherham were competing well and almost scored the first try of the game in the 12th minute. Michael Wood intercepted a pass and made 50 metres before being caught just short of the line by England ace Ben Cohen. However Rotherham didn’t have to wait long for their next score.

Phil Jones put in a deep kick for Anthony Elliott to chase and the Saints defender bundled the ball in to touch for a Rotherham Line out on the Saints 5 metre line. Macleod-Henderson collected from the set piece and Rotherham drove for the line. Saints held them on the line only for Rotherham’s Skipper Guy Easterby to quickly snipe from the base for the first try of the game. Jon Benson missed the not too difficult conversion.

On 23 minutes Northampton showed a glimpse of what they are capable of. Bruce Reihana collected the ball 20 metres inside his own half and made a break, Matt Dawson took it on with one of his usual snipes up the middle and then Drahm and Cohen combined to send Rotherham “old boy” Oriol Ripol in at the corner for a well worked try. Drahm missed with the conversion.

The second quarter of the first period was predominately Northampton’s and some terrific defending by Rotherham looked like seeing them going in at the break on level terms. But two minutes into added time, Rotherham conceded a penalty in front of the posts for Shane Drahm to send the hosts in at the break leading by 11-8.

Rotherham came out firing after the break and some desperate Northampton defending was needed to keep the Titans at bay. The 49th minute saw the turning point of the game. Rotherham’s Bloues Volschenk was sent to the bin for apparently laying on the wrong side. The fact that he was taking a shoeing from the Saints forwards held no sway with referee Steve Leyshon (who had a nightmare).

It took Northampton just 3 minutes to exploit their numerical advantage. Shane Drahm made the initial break and then British Lion Tom Smith took it on and offloaded beautifully in the tackle for Ben Cohen to charge in, fending off Anthony Elliott along the way to score a fine try. Drahm converted.

Rotherham came back strong and were all over Northampton, the Titans pack were dominating and pushing their counterparts all around. The 69th minute saw yet another controversial refereeing decision. A good Rotherham break saw Wood and Pritchard trade passes and set up a forward drive that looked to have ended with Riaan Olckers going over for a try. Leyshon was poorly positioned but his touch judge was not, the latter decided that Olckers had been held up. You could see by the reaction of both set of players that he had made the wrong decision.

Rotherham continued to press and the Saints continued to give away penalties. On 71 minutes Rotherham were awarded a penalty within easy striking distance of the posts, but the decision was made to kick for touch rather than take the points, which would have narrowed the gap to 7 and a bonus point for the visitors.

The last 10 minutes saw Rotherham virtually encamped in the Saints 22, but Northampton’s resilient defending made sure the Titans came away with nothing for all their hard work and enterprising play.

Afterwards Rotherham’s Director of Rugby Steph Nel commented, “We are disappointed that we haven’t come away with at least a bonus point, I really thought we had it in us. I was proud of the boys, we came down here and they performed very well under difficult circumstances. I thought the penalty count against us was a little bit high and the boys said Riaan’s try was a good one.

I thought this performance was even better than the Bath game. It was more controlled, our set piece has improved tremendously and our defence was good. Unfortunately we didn’t make touch as often as we wanted and having Reihana and Cohen running back at you is going to be difficult at the best of times. But I think the players and coaching staff can take a lot of heart out of today’s performance.”

NORTHAMPTON : Reihana (Grayson 69); Ripol, Hyndman, Tucker (Vilk 75), Cohen; Drahm, Dawson; Smith, Richmond (Miles 77), Taumoepeau, Lord, Hunter (capt) (McNamee 45); Connors, Fox, Seely.

ROTHERHAM: Stortoni; Elliott (Pieters 61), Pritchard, Jones (Umaga h-t), Wood; Benson, Easterby (capt); Lloyd (Olckers 65), Johnson (Long 65), Noon, Volschenk (Tuavii 58), Gross, Greeff, Macleod- Henderson, Lewis (Van der Merwe 16).

Ref: Steve Leyshon 3

Att: 10,839

Titans Man of the Match: The Rotherham Pack – They were all outstanding to a man.