Blown Away by the Gunners

By Timofe
August 19 2006

On an evening that felt more like November than August, the Tykes faced their first serious challenge of the campaign in Edinburgh against Heineken Cup opposition.

The long drive up to Edinburgh was an apprehensive affair given the weather conditions and the somewhat new status of the Leeds Tykes team. We were warmly wlecomed to the ground by the Gunners Supporters' Club who were equally nervous about how their season would go, given the recent changes in ownership. When asked for a score prediction I replied that I thought it would be a close game. I was wrong.

In a first half that saw Edinburgh run in 27 points (perhaps in answer to our Development side's 27-0 drubbing of Boromuir earlier in the evening?) the Tykes did not promise much in a performance that was only marginally worse that the officiating. I don't think of myself as one-eyed, but on this occasion I found myself feeling glad that some more passionate Leeds supporters were not present at the game or a fight may have broken out at half-time. As it was, there was plenty of the aggression that Lanny wanted on the pitch. I have seldom seen such an apparently poor performance from a set of officials "inadvertently" favour the home team in their first outing as a commercial operation. To say anything more would be slanderous - you can draw your own conclusions.

Although I thought so at the time, it wasn't all the ref's fault. Most of the penalty decisions were based on the touch judge putting his flag in and the ref responding to that. For example: Rob Rawlinson (that cheating, dirty, evil player we all know) was yellow carded for the heinous crime of pulling someone's shirt! The bounder!

The number of infringements that the ref chose to ignore from Edinburgh was staggering. At one point Biggsy was underneath two Gunner players having a bit of argy bargy and when the ref awarded a penalty (again at the bequest of the touch judge) he awarded it against Biggs. "Yes", I thought, "Biggsy might hurt their fists with his small head or something!"

One of their tries followed a rolling maul that went back and forwards and stopped three times. I thought that would be a scrum, but maybe the laws are different this year?

Sadly, the ref was not to blame for the general Leeds poor performance in the first half. The team looked like what they are: a group of individuals who haven't known each other very long. The communication that was so evident on the training field was lacking in the high wind and driving rain of a cold August evening. Some of the breaks were good but Leeds didn't have the ball enough to make a difference.

In more than a few cases they didn't help themselves. One such being when the ball was kicked out on the full by an Edinburgh player. Instead of bringing the ball back to where it was kicked from (as indicated by the ref, to be fair to him), Hinton decided to throw the ball in to himself and kick for touch - a move which resulted in losing the lineout put-in and gifting the Gunners 10 metres.

The scrums were fairly solid, though seemed to be reset if Edinburgh stood up and pinged if Leeds did. I noticed the Gunners' 6 & 7 release and reattach their binding on a number of occasions, but the ref must have been too busy to see. Perhas worryingly the scrum wheeled on more than one occasion - this will be a problem if Nat1 packs are what we are led to believe.

Lineouts were not great, but better than last year in the poor conditions. I won't mention how many times the ball went in straight from Edinburgh's throw - I can't count that low. To be fair, we probably did the same. At least we had the sense to change the call when throws to the back weren't working. There was one memorable lineout where Hoops ran in to it from the Edinburgh side. Creative thinking that...

In open play we did poorly in the first half, but much better in the second. After a landslide of points against us in the first half, Lanny must have settled the ship because we went 30 minutes without them scoring in the second and pulled back one of our own after a well-worked run between our centres. Sadly that was it as far as points went and they scored two good tries towards the end after making around ten substitutions.

Praise goes to Schusterman and Hinton for outstanding games - both were always involved in any Leeds move and covered a lot of ground. Hepworth looked OK as a running fly-half but needs to work on his kicking game a lot (at this level, 20 metres from a penalty is not far enough - maybe Hinton should take the penalties?). Tuilagi looked a good signing, full of hard-hitting running. Blackett had some good attacks too, though he needs to watch his temper. Edwards was an experienced, Dawson-style "complain to the ref" scrum-half, while Rauluni was more about running (though he sometimes delays his pass too much). Biggs was predictably good, but didn't see enough of the ball in the wet conditions. Welding didn't really get a chance to run either.

Lock and Dunbar were OK; Worrall looked sharp when he came on and got the game moving. Hooper looked nervous but Bouza was steady, particularly in the lineouts. The front row of Cusack, Rawlinson and McGee were good in open play but struggled a bit in set pieces..

The subs seemed to bring some stability to the Leeds strategy and Parks looks a very good number two to Rawly. Noon and Isaacson obviously brought experience to the scrum and we didn't turn in the second half. Oakley was largely obfuscated by play, but what I did see of him was OK - to be honest, apart from a few support plays he wasn't that noticeable. Holtby looked a good traditional winger and made some good runs when he first came on.

Overall, there is much to work on. The defensive line is too narrow, allowing Edinburgh to run tries in around the edges. The attacking line lacks communication - Hepworth and Blackett delayed the pass too long and got themselves into trouble too often. However, the second half performance gives me something to pin some hope on.

I'm putting it all down to nerves against a strong opposition in a game that counts for nothing. Bring on Northampton.