Roth 16 Plymouth 17

Jon Golding
By Roth Admin
October 16 2004

Rotherham’s Powergen Cup dreams were ended today when they lost 16-17 at home to Plymouth Albion. Although Rotherham had the lion’s share of second half possession coupled with preventing Plymouth scoring a single 2nd half point, they were unable to overall a 7 point first half deficit.

Taking nothing away from a hard working and resilient Plymouth side, Rotherham had an off day by their own standards. The line out was inconsistent, kicking out of hand was generally poor and there were too many handling errors. All of which gave Plymouth possession and they retained the ball exceptionally well.

Plymouth started the brighter and were six points ahead after 8 minutes through two James Pritchard penalties. Rotherham responded on 12 minutes when acting scrum half David Strettle fed Pez who threw a miss pass to Jason Keyter who then broke through the visitors defence to score under the posts. Pez converted to give Roth a singe point advantage.

Two more Pritchard penalties on 16 and 19 minutes restored Albion’s lead after Rotherham continued to infringe at the rucks. On the half hour mark Ramiro Pez was successful with his own penalty after Plymouth prevented quick ball when Roth were in dangerous field position, bringing the score to 10-12.

On 35 minutes once again Rotherham lost possession on half way, this time however they were punished. Plymouth kicked over the top and Rotherham’s full back Mark Sweeney was hesitant in dealing with it. He was also a little unlucky with the bounce, nevertheless Albion’s James Pritchard charge forward collecting the ball to dive over in the corner. Pritchard failed to convert his try and the half ended with the visitors 17-10 ahead.

Rotherham started the second half brightly and were rewarded in the 45th minute with a penalty, Plymouth were adjudged to be killing the ball. Pez converted in front of the posts to reduce the arrears to 4 points.

As the game progressed Rotherham were beginning to get on top, but a series of errors began to cause frustration. Roth were trying fancy moves instead of getting the basics right. Probably a sign of their confidence at the moment.

On 69 minutes Pez brought Roth to within a point after Plymouth once again infringed in the maul. This set up a frantic and tense last 10 minutes. Four minutes from time after some good work from the Roth pack, Pez was found in the pocket. His right footed attempt at a drop goal was charged down when heading straight between the sticks. Many questioned if that was the right decision as they appeared to be men over on the wing.

That turned out to be Roth’s last chance as the visitors saw out the remaining time with some excellent retention of the ball.

Final Score: Rotherham 16 Plymouth Albion 17


Rotherham’s skipper Craig Short reflected, “I’m massively disappointed, loosing a home game knowing that we played poor rugby. We couldn’t win our 1st phase ball – line outs and our set play.

We need to do a lot more drills on our line out. We need to go back to the training field and execute them time after time. It’s more difficult this season being part time, if you get a couple of injuries you can’t do line outs. You’ve got no-one to lift no-one to jump, it’s very difficult.

We needed to get the ball and play phase rugby, and then we would have scored more tries. There were times we had the overlap but the ball didn’t go out, it’s disappointing. You get into these positions, you go to the line out and then you give them the ball back. And with a team like Plymouth, you give them the ball back and they’ll drive it up for another 10 minutes and keep it.

We’ll keep our heads up though and go back to the basics and we’ll come back from this!”

Head Coach Mike Schmid added, “We came out and did everything anti what we said we were going to do. We wanted to make sure the set piece was spot on, we wanted to retain the ball, and we wanted to make sure we kept them under pressure – we didn’t do any of that consistently. We didn’t execute the simple things; we couldn’t hit our line out throw when we needed to. We lost ball in crucial areas of the park, we gave them too many chances and if you give good teams chances they can score.

If we’d played well and lost by 30 I can live with that, but when we don’t play well and loose that bothers me. It’s a good job I’ve got a new baby because I’ll be up all night thinking about today – at least I’ll have some company.”



Roth Admin Man of the Match: Jon Golding.

Referee: Rob Debney


15 Mark Sweeney, 14 Lee Blackett, 13 Peter Jorgensen, 12 Jason Keyter, 11 David Strettle, 10 Ramiro Pez, 9 Jacob Rauluni, 1 Jon Golding, 2 Neil Briggs, 3 Rod Latham, 4 Jonathan Pendlebury, 5 Glen Kenworthy, 6 Des Tuiavii, 7 Craig Short, 8 Mike Schmid

Replacements from: 16 Richard Emms, 17 John Rawson, 18 Tim Maslanyk, 19 Adam Harrington, 20 Tom Rice, 21 Tom Eaton, 22 Michael Wood.

Plymouth Albion: 15 J Pritchard, 14 L Robinson, 13 G Gelderbloom, 12 K Fisilau, 11 J Fabian; 10 M Carrington, 9 H Martens, 1 T Paoletti, 2 S Pearl, 3 D Parkes, 4 B Luxton, 5 A Perry, 6 M Schusterman, 7 D Thomas (capt), 8 D Ward-Smith.

Replacements: 16 A Ozdemir, 17 N Cane, 18 N Simpson, 19 R Tamihana, 20 G Dawe, 21 N Rouse, 22 C Lowrie.