52 Old White Rugby Football Club - 12 High Country Rugby Football Club

HC-12 OW-52

Lets first talk about what happened and then I we can talk about what to improve on.

Game Observations – From the kickoff, OW upped the pace of the game by quickly attacking the fringe of the rucks, mauls and scrums. HC had no real answer for the “Pick and Go” style of rugby and was put on its heals very quickly, phase after phase. OW forced the tempo and made the gain line almost every time they touched the ball in the first 15 minutes of the game….mostly around the fringe. OW was able to win the ball effectively and quickly with 3-4 players, thus keeping plenty of resources off the fringe for the next phase. HC tackled fairly well, but was victimized by not being in position for the phase at hand.

The set pieces were generally dominated by OW, mostly in the scrums, however several HC line outs were stolen by OW because they jumped higher and slightly in front of HC’s jumper. Scrums floated between being stable and unstable. Just very inconsistent by HC. OW was able to attack the fringe of the scrums very effectively and punished the fact that HC was being moved backwards. There were a few decent HC scrums that allowed for 8-man pickups and HC’s backs to show their moxy. These were more highlights than consistent play.

Being on their heals from the get go, caused a flury of penalties against HC. In the first 10-15 minutes by my count, HC committed 8 penalties including diving over, coming in from the side, offsides and a high tackle. Many of these penalties were a result of being pressed and “lazy running”. Not being in position, bred the penalties. OW was able to pull down the line out quickly near our goal line, get the ball to into an effective maul for a try.

HC’s halfback combination looked very good with limited ball on Saturday. Our 80 years of experience at SH linked well with Tumi at FH. Tumi was man of the match for making chicken salad out of chicken poop. His try in the 1st half was a good answer to OW’s two quick tries. At that moment the score was 12-7. Honorable mention was Joe at Flanker. Kid had tremendous work rate and seemed to be involved in everything.

What to work on (just about everything):

· Scrummaging. No need to point fingers because we have not done enough work here and broken down many of the specific techniques. Can anyone get us a scrum sled?

· Line Outs. Again, more practice, better jumping, lifting and throwing. I think our scheme is fine.

· Fringe Defense. Weakest part of our game Saturday. We know what to do and this will be drilled.

· Rucks. Too much observation and not enough aggression and cleaning. We want to get to the point where we can always will a ruck with 3 guys.

· Defending the maul. We will go over this.

· Operating our own mauls? Time to add this.

· Backline positioning

· Backline rucking out wide

· Kickoff positioning

· Kick and chase

· Counterattacks.

By the way, how about High Country as a group of guys? We outnumbered them at their own bar, kicked their keg quickly and all enjoyed the evening at The Brewhouse. It made me quite proud to walk into The Brewhouse at 6:30pm and see about 25 people drinking it up. Plenty of teams know how to celebrate a win. How many know how to deal with a loss…..not many.

I think this quote fits for this week:

“Once you agree upon the price you must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent’s pressure, and the temporary failures.” - Lombardi

Thanks for a good day of rugby. We just played our worst game of the season.

Mitch