Quote ="Mr. Zucchini Head"Just got back from Wrexham, and the game has certainly given me some food for thought.
First of all, I'd like to give a big congratulations to Crusaders, they played very well and fully deserved the win. Alot of sides will get done over down there this season and imo they won't be anywhere near the wooden spoon. Also I'd like to say it's a decent set up down there and I hope they kick on and make a success of it.
Now to our performance. Simply put, we were like a ship without a rudder. Defence, fine, go forward, not a problem, kicking game, pretty good, attacking options, none existant. Tansey was the only one who looked a threat when he had the ball, Washbrook is not a scrum half, and as much as I hate to say it, I think Rich Horne's best days have been and gone. We were actually pretty good in our approach work, we made a few breaks and the pack took us into their half again and again, but when we got there we didn't know what to do and were reliant on a piece of individual brilliance or a forward crashing over. There is no doubt in my mind that if Long and played we would have won, probably quite comfortably too. Lauaki is becoming a bit of a worry. He does some brilliant things and then comes up with some ill disclipline and undoes it all. I'm not saying he cost us the game today but his penalties were certainly a factor imo.
That said I'm not too worried, just like people were wrong to get carried away after two games it would be silly to get too disheartened by this game. The effort was there, this was evident from our goal line defence in the first half, we just seemed to lack the final pass. Games like this crop up every now and again, I look back to games like London at home in our first game at the KC, and Leigh away when we scraped a draw. We would be foolish to think we could be at the top of our game every week, every team will get results like this some time or other. As I've said earlier people are not giving enough credit to a Crusaders team who look pretty good this year.
The proof of how far we have come will not be in the fact we lost today, but in how we bounce back next week. Tbh I don't have a clue whether Long will be fit or not, but either way, if we play well next week this will be put down as a blip and we will be able to get on with the season, if however we put in another display like this one I will start to get a little worried by it.'"
good post
