20M Defense : Mon May 04, 2009 11:48 am
After watching the game yesterday I think once again it confirmed our urgent need for a defensive coach to help TM out.
I know a couple of decisions were iffy and didn't help our cause but the fact is that defending our 20M is a real nightmare.
I feel comfortable with our defence upto our 20M line and with our scramble defence if there is a break in field
However the fact remains we are extremely vunerable in our own 20M,
take for example yesterday Hull kick into our 20M and both Wainwright and Ford were Jogging !!!! to collect the ball ....absoulutely no urgency.... this led to a try.
The incident where Shenny jogged!!! back hoping the ball would go into touch and ended up with Calderwood putting pressure on Shenny leading to the scrum where they scored from, im not debating if it was the right decision just that Shenny showed no urgency in dealing with the ball in our 20M
I just feel we are not focussed enough on defending our line and those two incidents are what really cost us the game yesterday, deal with both those kicks and they would have been 12 points behind
There were other incidents like our poor defence on the first try and there were too many to highlight against Celtic, even matches where we have won we have leaked so many try's.
These types of errors are indemic in our defencive 20M line and as we found out to our cost yesterday will lose us more close games than we will win.
I am not attacking the team and not TM either I just feel that with a bit of help we could fix the area in our game that will be the difference in being comfortable in the top 8 or fighting for the 8.