The Derby

Quote: Mr. Zucchini Head "A few interesting stats from the game. The most pleasing one given some of our recent performances was errors. We made 6 handling errors in the match, but one of them was on a free play when Logan dropped it over the line, and another was Talanoa early on when he got his fingertips to that kick but couldn't reel it in. So that's actually only 4 times we coughed possession up in 80 minutes of rugby, which is outstanding. By comparison Rovers made 13 (again a couple were knocked down passes when we were attacking).

The other is missed tackles. It was a fairly frantic game at times and both sides slipped off a lot of tackles. We missed 37, which sounds really high. Dixon and Kelly were responsible for 19 of those, with 12 and 7 tackle busts. But Rovers missed 74, and the only man on our team who didn't break a tackle was Leon Pryce.

In the individual stats there were a few good performances but since there was a bit of discussion about Rankin v Shaul earlier I thought I would single him out. Rankin had one try assist, five tackle busts, ran 22 times for 174 metres and was error, penalty and missed tackle free. That's pretty outstanding really.'"

The only negative for me was the poor handling of high kicks. We constantly refuse to contest them and either let the ball bounce or allow the opposition a chance at the ball. It cost us when Welham caught it and there were several other occasions when we were fortunate.

Our Super 8 opponents are sure to target this so we need to be working specifically on high balls in training leading up to them.