Quote ="hula89"The reason we didnt capitalise on the 11 man part was because we lost fielden for those 10 too and he was having a great game imo.'"
I think we just lost sight of what we do best. Aggressive defence and quick attack. We got sucked into a 'we are harder than you' battle last night and forgot to play rugby. Although it was great to have a bit of biff back in the game, we simply did not respect the football enough and tried to score on every play instead of building pressure. How often did we get to the last tackle? when we did get there our kicking game (in general more than attcking wise) was awful , more often than not going straight down hodgsons throat. We were too ellaborate in attack and too many times just dropped the ball on an over complex play. Hudds tactics were spot on- disrupt our gameplan(niggle etc) and have a great kicking game. They mixed up their kicks and our centre/wings were all at sea.
bentham was useless(as always) but i didn't see him ,miss a tackle or drop a pass. Some of out top performers had mediocre games(Lockers,Tommy), but we can't expect them to be world beaters every week. Marsh/pryce combo didn't work and the backrow in general was poor.
Hopefully this is a blip and not us going backwards. It may well do prove to have a galvanising effect but i would prefer for us to go into the play-offs in form rather than limping over the line.
All this said, if someone had have offered us at least 3rd 12 months ago how many of us would have taken it?
