Griffon RFC News - 04/22/06

April 22nd, 2006: Northern Michigan Univ. 26 Battle Creek 25

Definitely a tale of two halves in this game. We were down 26-0 at half-time.
Northern Michigan University at home, with a full squad, are a tough team. They have some excellent athletes, especially at No. 8 (Collegiate All-Star) and full-back. We put a few wayward kicks directly into those runners hands, with time for them to get up to full speed, and they duly punished us by scoring and setting up tries.
We got off to our notorious slow start, which may have been due to our game preparation at Ken Akert's farmhouse on Friday night!!!!
Gradually we got things turned around, and our defence held the NMU runners at bay , forcing fumbles and turnovers near our goal line and preventing any more scores.
So, we were down 4 tries and 3 conversions.

After the half, NMU made some substitutions, and we also ended up with some NMU "old boys" on our team, due to a couple of injuries. These players helped us by being good athletes, and hindered us by trying some loose individual play when we needed to tighten things up and play a controlled mauling game.
So, midway through the second half, we finally "clicked", and put our game plan into action - long kicks from the midfield position made the NMU fullback have to turn and deal with a ball behind him - we capitalised on NMU errors as they tried to run out of their own 22 metre area. We started to maul , using our strength against their speed, and we started to score points.
Two penalties, three tries , and two conversions got us to 25 points, with the last minute ticking away. NMU managed to scramble the ball into touch to end the game.

I'm proud of the lads for keeping their heads up , and keeping the effort going through the game.
Many of the players remarked that last year the team may have let their heads drop and allowed a larger score against them, but this team is made of sterner stuff.
If we can start a game the way we have been finishing them recently, we will start to dominate and put any team we play under enormous pressure.

Many of the players had to play in unfamiliar positions on Saturday, and did a good job of adjusting eventually and working as a team, rather than as individuals.

The Widerberg rugby tradition continued, with Clint grabbing his first try on Saturday. We also had the father/son combinations of Al and Luke Houser, and Scott and Tom Albers playing on Saturday.

A couple of coaching points:
1. On three occasions on Sat., we had a forward who tried to run the ball into a ruck in the middle part of the field, when the game plan called for a long kick to turn the other team. When I talked to each forward, they acknowledged the error, and said it was "heat of the moment" - an individual mistake. But, from a coaches perspective, from the side of the field, I see three missed opportunites to put pressure on our opposition and force them into turnovers near their own goal-line. I'll set a challenge to the team to eliminate these errors - we will see better results when we do this.
2. Our opponents had a player sent to the sin-bin for 10 minutes. This also happened against Kazoo, and Fort Wayne. I don't think we are taking advantage of playing against 14 men during this time. I need the whole team to see that the other team is a man down, and identify where we can take advantage of their missing player.

Thanks to everyone for travelling on such a long road trip, and it was a pleasure watching the effort on Saturday.


Special thanks to Gary Goidosik for his sponsorship - be sure to visit his website to support Gary's business.

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