BarbedWire2:
Tough game to watch. Stunk the place out really. But, got the win and are reeling in those above us.
What frustrated me the most is the chances that we blew, particularly early on. Two times Jake Thewlis should have walked ins in the first half, one he can’t finish off and the other goes over his head on a 4 on 2. Williams, for all his plus points, needs to calm down in his head and just make good choices. Could have been out of sight early on. It happened again in the second half when he plays a pass to everyone and no one on the left side, if he picks any one player it’s a try but he flashes it across them all and Fitzgibbon leaves it for Wrench, who leaves it for Thewlis, who doesn’t get a finger on it. It’s a dead set walk in. Just bombing chances through either negligence or blind panic.
The Sneyd playing short at the line saw another knock on this week too, not from a scrum for once but we’re not learning that lesson.
We knew they were coming for us. They will have marked that day on the calendar for their big day out, and we let them have a say in it. Literally gave them the ball in half of our first half sets.
An encouraging point was a little spell where Ratchford was at 9. He made a point of highlighting the messy ruck, coming around a player on the ground and standing over them to signal to the ref what was going on. From then on the ref seemed to police the ruck, as before that it was pedestrian. We got a bit of joy just running from dummy half after that point. Discouraging point, Ratchford is the best 9 available right now, it’s taken us since April for someone to do that, and we’ll probably go back to Powell and Crowther for 2 more weeks for reasons even I can’t quite explain. I’m sure they are good pro’s and prepare well and defend smart, but there is no point in having broken field runners like Williams and Dufty if you can’t get any broken field. And neither of them have done in 8-10 weeks what Ratchford did in 20 minutes. And it’s Stef flipping Ratchford not James Roby.
Positives; we won, Ben Currie, didn’t waste space on my Sky box.
Negatives; exhausting to think about writing them down.
Spot on all that. Ratchford was actually good at 9, at least got us moving forward from the ruck instead of sideways.
As you said, the passing choices from our halfbacks last night were often dreadful. We often try these loopy passes to wingers that just leave the wingers with no chance: either the pass is too high or the ball floats for so long that the space has gone by the time the winger catches it. Only really Dufty nails those passes consistenly as he throws a flat ball.
We just got nothing moving in the wide channels yesterday: Stone is not an improvement on Russell, Fitzgibbon looks like he feels his body could break apart at any moment and Tai was as anonymous as I can remember. Wrench shows the odd spark but he needs better ball to be an attacking threat. Jake Thewlis is on the sort of journey his brother was on a couple of years ago: he has good footwork, but will get targeted in defence so he needs protection from his inside men.
