A Point At Last!
Wanton Abandon?!?!?
By Tyke Steve
October 18 2005
A trip to Worcester saw Leeds Tykes finally pick up a point, but another performance lacking a winning edge still sees us languishing down at the wrong end of the table with five Guinness Premiership games played. This was the Tykes seventh straight loss of the season.
An epic trip (South Wales to Lincoln, to Peterborough, to Stamford) saw me round off my Friday with my first visit to Sixways, Worcester’s home ground - apparently called so due to the “six ways” there are off the Junction 6 roundabout at the M5, one of which takes you to the ground. Having got off the M5 and found somewhere to park off road, I walked in to the ground, chatting with a Wuss fan who told me the usual stuff about how Leeds were a better side than our league position was. He even told me the secret to beating Worcester, i.e. keep the ball away from their pack and throw it wide. I immediately had visions of Biggs and Doherty being given the ball in space and running in a bonus point plus of tries as we jumped up the table! A smile came to my face. I thought/dreamt of giving Phil Davies a call and letting him know this exciting insight:
Steve: “Hey Phil! It’s Tyke Steve here!”
Phil: “Hi Steve, what’s new?”
Steve: “Play fast and wide, keep the ball away from their forwards and we’ll get loads of tries and probably a bonus point!”
Phil: “Cheers Steve, anything else?”
Steve: “Yeah, let Doherty and Biggs play with wanton abandon”
Phil: “Okay, you’re on!”
I checked my mobile and realised I didn’t have Phil’s mobile number listed. “Drat!” I thought.
My Wuss informant (if that’s what I can call him) then asked me how our forwards had been doing this year, I came back to earth, and told him they’d spent most of their time going backwards. My smile had gone.
After a trudge (a nice word isn’t it?) through the darkness and passed several arc lights run by generators I got to the ground, bade my informant farewell and went to seek out a ticket. I went to a ticket stall – if that’s what you’d call it – to be accosted by this chap (sorry mate, I don’t know your name, but expect I will soon!) standing by the ticket stall “plying” me with a ticket to be told I’d even be sat with the Tykes fans! All of us together! I snapped his arm off and trudged off to try and find where I was supposed to be. Wandering in, I grabbed a burger and coke (I was starving and thirsty from my epic trip – honest) and enjoyed the ambience. Having been sent in the wrong direction by several officials, I eventually found my seat on the second row in the corner by fellow supporters, several of whom I recognised from our summer brotherhood session at the Fat Bloke 7s.
So to the game: I won’t go into an account of who passed to whom and who tackled whom and when, but to me the key points were:
- We lost – again.
- We defended well for a good part of the game, but then, not having much possession we didn’t have much choice, we had to.
- De Marigny kicked well, getting all the points.
- The set piece needs work! Yes! It really does! The lineout and scrum were poor, and by poor, I mean really poor. We were turned in the scrum several times (three if I’m not mistaken) on our put in, and lost several lineouts on our own throws. Last year we were pretty damned good at our own lineout, and at pinching a few ones of the other side’s, alas, not this year.
- The backs got little ball, which isn’t surprising given the poor set piece control and the lack of possession. One super effort by Biggs saw him run the ball from his own try line to finally get tackled just short of the 10-metre line in our half. I felt he’d done this to remind himself what it was like to actually have ball in his hands!
- I glanced at the clock at 57 minutes and three players came on (Ross, Hyde and Rawlinson for Bulloch, Thomas and Stimpson). Is this now a Tykes policy? Once the clock hits around the 60 minutes mark throw on 3 subs? I wondered what difference it made.
- Worcester weren’t that brilliant – but then, we weren’t any better.
So there you go. I had a very quick chat with a couple of fellow Tykes fans at the end (Timofe and Skibum), we got a bonus point was our 9okay, maybe my) assessment and left it at that.
So next week brings on the Cardiff Blues in the Heineken Cup. The good news is that they lost to Leinster today, they’ve signed Jonah Lomu, but he isn’t playing and Tom Shanklin looks to be out as well. The bad news is we haven’t won yet. Wonder if we’ll break this run of bad form next week? Heineken Cup rugby in Cardiff; Tykes playing; great city; plenty of pubs; I’ll be there! Gotta keep up the support!