Quote: bewaresheep "I tend to agree with what's been said elsewhere.
First and foremost it was a win and that will hopefully help calm the nerves and stop some of the crazy attempts at offloading the ball when there is no hope of anyone in support getting it.
I thought Kearney played better than some on here are giving him credit for and I though his swapping and changing with Royston helped shake things up and keep Crusaders on their toes. Addy wasn't great but. like Sykes last week, it was his first run out so I'd expect him to a bit rusty. Missing touch from a penalty is a cardinal sin but I've seen more experienced players do the same thing - it happens.
There were a lot of silly mistakes on both side - knocking on from a 20m tap, passing into a crowd of Crusader players etc... Like I said, I think some of those were down to nerves and an eagerness to keep the ball alive when in reality we'd have probably been home and dry if we'd just done the basics right. A case of walking before we can run and something that will improve as players get used to playing with each other.
I think fitness is a bit of an issue, even in the first half. Roysten looked knacked after one of our tries and was blowing a lot more than I would have expected even after having just come back from the other end of the pitch. Injuries aside hopefully that match fitness is something that will come in the next few weeks. I don't know what the focus was on the extended pre-season
All pretty reasonable comments, though I'm not so sure about the fitness being an issue. In all three games so far, we've given away so much ball late in the game and had to do a lot of back to back sets in defence, that it's impossible for players not to look cream crackered. To me, we need to concentrate a bit more on keeping the ball, especially at the back end of games. At times when we've been well in front, we've still played like we were ten points behind with time running out. If we can stop giving the ball away with silly offloads or giving daft penalties away then we wouldn't have to chase the ball so much and we'd have more energy to do the tackling.
