Griffon RFC News - 04/03/06

April 1st, 2006: Northwest Indiana 32 Battle Creek Griffon RFC 3
I need to explain this score. Northwest Indiana (NWI) moved the ball wide early, and managed to score in the corner. Having seen this success, they scored 4 tries in the first 20 minutes, with one conversion.
The Griffons made some adjustments to their defence, forcing NWI to come back inside, and we stopped them there with cover tacklers. I was pleased to see the team figuring out how to make these adjustments in the heat of battle. So, we were down 22-0.
The Griffons kept NWI scoreless for the remainder of the half. We continued to do well in the lineouts, with good lifting, and good work by Todd Day catching the ball. When we struggled in our mauling, we changed to a rucking attack. Another good adjustment.

The main disappointment for me was the lack of our kicking game. Just before the game started, we walked the field and agreed that we would kick for the corners when we were in the middle of the field, to gain good field position deep in NWI territory. But, for the whole first half, we continued to run and ruck from the middle of the field, setting up a couple of rucks and then turning the ball over.
With our kicking game, we should have been putting pressure on NWI, making our opponents turn and run back towards their own line, having to dig themselves out.
This is a mistake that the whole team has to understand and correct.

At the beginning of the second half, the Griffons put great pressure on NWI, forcing them to give up penalties. We cut down on our own mistakes, and forced NWI into mistakes; this was a good phase of the game for the Griffons. We missed 4 out of 5 kicks for goal - we have to improve our goalkicking. The score at this point could have been 22 - 15, but was still 22 - 3. I think you can see how important kicking our penalties is for us.
NWI managed a penalty kick and one converted try in the second half for 10 points.

I was pleased with our increased effort and the pressure we exerted on our opponents in the second half. We learned some good techniques from our opponents, and we will be practicing these this week.

My main criticism so far after two games is that we seem to "spot" the other team the opening 20 minutes before we start to gel and work together, and in both games we have failed to use our kicking game until I lose my voice shouting from the sideline (not a good thing for any of us).
Both of these problems are easily corrected, and once we correct these we will see more points coming our way.


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