Insight with Sambrook - First Edition

Worthing College 2nd XV –v-Weald Community College 1st XV Wednesday 10th November 2010

Today’s game saw a first start for several players since joining the Academy. Most notably Olly brought an international dimension to the team with his first game since recovering from a serious knee injury. And what a debut! Olly was in great form showing high levels of skill and application as he made his presence felt in the tackle and with several excellent turnovers to his credit he will be one to watch.

The first ten minutes was very one sided with the Worthing pack dominating in the scrum and at the breakdown. This dominance was however wasted to a certain extent by the spreading of “white line fever” and several excellent chances went begging for want of a final pass. With territorial dominance and possession in abundance the first score had an air of inevitability as Cameron crashed over following a trademark catch and drive from 10 metres out. This score was converted, a rare event in itself, by Kieron who built on this kick to provide a MOM performance with two tries, numerous sniping runs, excellent service and a further conversion. One try was the result of another well executed catch and drive and the other was a far more individual effort with several excellent steps en route. Kieron’s partner at half back, Lewis, had a good game with line breaks and tactical kicking backed up by intelligent use of the short side or a switch from blind to open when the opportunity presented.

Simon led the pack with authority and Henry was prominent in the loose with several storming runs making good yards. Peter also had his first start and it too was promising as he made his presence felt with several carries into Weald’s 22.. A blow to the mouth meant an early bath for Pete in the second half but he is definitely making progress. The front row continued to dominate at the set piece throughout the game and Chris found his range well at lineout time. Connor made a nuisance of himself in the loose and used an increasingly effective fend to good advantage. Dom too was making big holes in the Weald’s valiant defence whenever he took a short ball although he did suffer the Ref’s wrath late in the first half with a thrice repeated offence at the breakdown leading to la carte jeune.

Outside the somewhat makeshift back line went through the moves and plays efficiently rather than effectively, it had too much of the training ground about it at times. Sam made hard yards at times and put in several crunching hits on his opposite number. Gage had his best performance yet in my opinion as he surged forward against his old teammates. Declan, Greg and Vic at first counter attacked at every opportunity and always got over the gain line. Grant replaced Vic who had to retire after a jinking run with several excellent steps ended in what appeared to be sprained ankle. Grant had been on the field for less than 5 minutes before he benefitted from the pack’s dominance and Henry’s aggression to take an offload less than a metre from the line to dot down in the left hand corner. Although it was a position that he had previously claimed as his second least favourite after prop he made no mistakes for the following 60 minutes. Greg , Declan and Grant were always secure under the high ball.
So, what went wrong? Why, with so much domination, did Worthing not win by a cricket score? Same problem as in previous games with a negative penalty count of more than 6 to 1 against allowing the Weald to stay in touch with some good penalty shots for too much of the game. Discipline at the breakdown is not collectively our strongest suit. Allied to this is a frustrating inability to look after ruck ball that has clearly been won but then lost. Against stronger opposition this will be fatal. To sum up we were never going to lose, individually there were some fine performances, but we need to take care of discipline and ball at the breakdown, one and all.