Coventry Preview
By Peter Creek
March 27 2007
Coventry Rugby Club celebrated their centenary thirty- three years ago. At that time they were the top club in the country and had been for the previous decade. Their line up bristled with international players and the Warwickshire county side once fielded fourteen Coventry players in a fixture.
Like many of the old clubs from rugby’s heartland Coventry have struggled to come to terms with a structured league setup and they now find themselves in National Division One having stayed in the top flight only for the inaugural season.
However the club are ambitious and have a new stadium at Butts Park, close to their original home, which they hope will be the launch pad for a challenge for promotion to the Guinness Premiership. On Saturday they entertain league leaders Leeds and will be hoping for a better performance in front of their own fans than they put up at Headingley Carnegie earlier in the season. They will be buoyed by the news that captain Ben Russell has put pen to paper and committed himself to the club for a further two years.
Tykes are entering the home straight this weekend, not having lost in the league since their visit to Rotherham back in December. When they played Coventry at home Leeds were going through a phase where they could not put together long passages of sustained pressure. This flaw in the team’s character has gradually been ironed out and in recent weeks they have been building momentum which they have readily converted into points. This was amply illustrated against Exeter two weeks ago when they comprehensively outplayed the Chiefs for the middle hour of the game and turned a ten nil deficit into a well deserved victory.
Throughout the season Leeds have relied on their dominant pack to overcome the opposition. Too often the backline have stuttered and misfired as the coach experimented with the lineup to find his best combination. In recent weeks the Tykes have had a settled back division which now links seamlessly with the forwards producing the sort of rugby that the fans always knew was not far away. Integral to this improvement has been the growing confidence of young fly half Richard Vasey who now controls the game behind his rampant forwards. Vasey has an array of finishers outside him who are making good use of the excellent service that they receive. Tykes also benefit from having quality players on the bench to bring on when the opposition are tiring.
Stuart Lancaster will have his team focussed on the Coventry game. He knows that the club’s destiny is in the team’s hands. No one is taking anything for granted. This is a tricky fixture. The Tykes must assume that Coventry will be a different proposition at home. Leeds need to win and win well. The form book says that they will but this has been a season full of nasty little surprises for the top teams. Confidence will play a major factor on Saturday and Leeds have barrowloads of it. I take the Tykes to win by fifteen points.