Today was a day of promise and a little disappointment, perhaps a little early in the
season for a tournament and the boys seemed to find it hard to keep a level of concentration. Ivel played fairly well in the first games
and then really dropped off the pace and seemed to spend big parts of some games bickering at me and between themselves. This was
especially true of the game against Frome, who we should easily have beaten but there was so little urgency after every Frome try that we
wasted 2 minutes of the match deciding who would take the free pass! Perhaps a little over enthusiasm with wanting to carry the ball but we
need to stamp this out quickly. the last couple of games we improved again and played some of our best rugby.
in attack we were dangerous
with the ball but we need to space ourselves out, everyone is around the ball like bees to a honey pot. We must remember that rugby is a
team game and the first carrier of the ball rarely scores but pulls the defence in and hopefully leaves space for supporting players to run
into.
Defensive organisation was good with some well spaced lines, but again we need to get organised quickly and “spread out” - if i said
it once i said it one hundred times on sunday!
There was some excellent tagging too and Liam was a true ‘tiger’ but we need to get the
whole team moving up as a line and putting pressure on the attackers to make them make mistakes.
Good straight running a debut try from Tom
and a couple for Billy meant that all 8 players got on the score sheet with Liam and Rory scoring 8 each over the seven games.
Lots of
things to think about before the next game some key areas are:-
1. First to the restart - be there organised before the other team have
time to set up a decent defence.
2. Spread out in attack - make room for ourselves by spreading the defence.
3. Spread out in defence -
make sure they don’t have any gaps to run through
4. Defend like tigers as soon as the opposition take their free pass up onto them in a
line
5. Next year there are no coaches allowed on the pitch so it is important that the boys start to organise and communicate between
themselves.
6. We need to begin to pass before we are tagged to keep the ball flowing - this is going to be a tough one to get the boys
to pass when they dont ‘have to’.
Man of the match for me was Liam with his eight tries and some superb tagging - leading the line as a ‘tiger’.
Results
Ivel 4 - MSN 5 - Scorers Simeon, Liam, Rory and Murray
Ivel 4 Chew Valley 3 Scorers Rory x2, Liam and Ethan
Ivel
4 Frome 4 Scorers Liam, Roryx2 and Simeon
Ivel 4 Melksham 5 Scorers Liamx2, Ethan and Rory
Ivel 2 Walcot 5 Scorers Rory and Liam
Ivel
5 Warminster 5 Scorers Tom, Liam, Rory and Freddy
Ivel 3 Wells 3 Scorers Billyx2 and Liam
