Another Mournful Loss
Under Pressure?
By Steve the Tyke
September 5 2005
With four loses on the trot and a trip to Franklins Gardens to take on Northampton Saints in the same boat as us …… at the wrong end of the table! This was to be an important game for the Tykes, with a return visit to be made soon in the Powergen Cup.
Phil Davies had made two changes to the side that took on Newcastle Falcons on 27th December, Chris Bell came in to replace the injured Tom Biggs and Dan Hyde came in for Jon Dunbar who dropped to the bench.
A minutes silence was held before kick off for the victims of the recent tsunami disaster in the Far East and the match announcer was clearly moved by the issue and the collection that was made.
Tykes started fairly well, a good rolling maul in the Saints twenty-two showed promise and brightened my hopes. Saints managed to sort it out and cleared. Tykes took the lead through a Gordon Ross penalty on 12 minutes and I was beginning to think we could get a result out of this. I had raised my hopes too soon, as Blowers went over for an unconverted try for the Saints a few minutes later. However, Ross restored the lead through another penalty shortly after.
The Saints got a line out, which they managed to win (a rare event as Thompson was showing all the line out throwing skills of a man with two left hands), a move by Drahm led to a Cohen try close to the posts, which was converted, giving the Saints a 15 – 6 lead. The Tykes seemed to be making lots of unforced errors; our handling skills were rather shocking. I was beginning to expect a 20-30 point loss. However, a clever chip ‘n’ chase by Cardey led to him just being beaten by Cohen in a foot race to the in-goal area.
Parks landed a few punches on Krige at a scrum; something had obviously gone on, as my experience of Parks isn’t one of him being a dirty player. I can’t say the same thing about Krige though! Ross pulled back another in the second half to take us to 15 – 9 and bonus point territory. The rugged Tykes forwards were playing well and taking yards from the Saints forwards in the rolling mauls they set up. Northampton Saints’ fullback Reihana glided through our defence all too often and after a few phases of play, Stimpson gave away a penalty which Drahm converted, leaving the score at 18 – 9.
So, no win, no bonus point, no tries, what went well? Two things, the line out functioned well and we secured pretty much most of our own ball with no real problems (but then, with Thompson as their hooker the Saints forward are probably not used to securing any of their own line out ball, let alone the oppositions!). Our mauling was effective, Phil Davies had spoken about it after the Falcons game “"We have worked a lot on our forwards' driving play”, and we took yards off the Saints pack quite easily.
However, that seemed to be about it. Even I, whose knowledge about scrumaging is minimal to say the least, could see that the scrum seemed a mess, though this might have been down to the Saints scrum engaging crookedly and the fact that the referee ignored it. Rayno Gerber had a bit of a torrid time and was substituted as a result. The worst bit for me was our handling skills, dropped passes, knock-ons, schoolboy errors, need I say more? Several times we got the ball out amongst the backs, but silly errors let us down. Phil Davies knows this too, and said after the match "We drove quite well and scrummaged reasonably well and we provided a reasonable platform to attack from. But we are making silly little errors that are costing us dearly. We are pleased with our performance level but we have got to eradicate the errors." Time to sort it out surely? Do we have a plan B for when a plan A doesn’t work? In fact, at times, I wondered if there was there a game plan at all?
I wasn’t alone, several people made the trip to Franklins Gardens, no doubt travelling further than I had to, coming from near Peterborough isn’t as bad as a run down from Leeds or Yorkshire, and on New Years Day too! So all credit to them!
Stonecross reported “…it was appalling. OK the weather was a bit grim but it was the same for both sides. We didn't seem to have any game plan never mind a plan B. Dropped balls, missed tackles and pretty poor kicking says it all. Why we didn't bring Rees on for Cardey amazes me however I suppose the party line will be "we're building something special here at Leeds and it takes time". What a load of codswallop, time has run out. It's a game plan we need; we've got the talent, why can't we use it? There is no direction at half backs and when we get the ball out its man and ball all the time. Relegation looms and at this rate I don't fancy our chances against Worcester. Forwards ground it out well but they must be thinking what's the point? It will be interesting to see what the Boss says this week in the paper.”
Simonh came along “I also went to Franklins Gardens today, for the first time. Nice set-up. I thought the game itself was probably not a bad spectacle for a neutral -plenty of running rugby, but loads of spills. Unfortunately nearly all the running was made by the Saints - Drahm and Reihana caused us no end of problems slicing up our defence. We just didn't do the same to them, always on the back foot. Our forwards shaded it over theirs - our lineout was better and we got some decent rolling mauls on, and defended well. The set scrum was a shambles, but we pushed them about a fair bit. It is just very difficult to see where we are going to score tries. They seemed to have so much more space than we did. We're looking nervous again. Mcmillan had a better game, Stimpson earned his keep in some excellent defensive play, and had one or two good runs in attack, but occasionally had a rush of blood to the head and booted them the ball. Snyman was pretty anonymous and was duly substituted, Ross had a reasonable game, Bell made a half break or two, but nothing that looked as though it was going to open them up. They scored two tries in the first half and had a third disallowed. It did look as though they might get the four-try bonus point at one stage, but we tightened things up a bit in the second half. But going into the break with a six point deficit (12-6) with a decent wind in our favour was ominous. They would have beaten us by a whole lot more if Drahm was any good a place kicking. I'm disappointed.”
Spot on Simonh, that last sentence just about sums it up; and what’s more we play them again on the weekend of the 22nd January in the Powergen Cup! Let’s hope we sort out the game plan, scrum and put some glue on our hands!