Yorkshire Carnegie
Our thoughts turn to.......Rotherham!
By WW
September 10 2015
The first hurdle of the season has been overcome. The giants have been vanquished back to Jersey. Whilst the performance last weekend was still flawed the last 30 minutes gave us enough optimism to see us through the week to our next fixture against our old friends Rotherham Titans...
Last season the South Yorkshire boys beat us at Headingley in one of the worst games ever. The return fixture saw them overrun us with six tries to our three. Despite our revival at the end of the season the Titans ended two places and seven points in front of us. Bragging rights were firmly with the Clifton Lane outfit.
In the close season Rotherham lost Lee Blackett, the best young coach in the Championship, to Wasps. Lee popped back to nab star backrow forward Alex Rieder. The Titans still have a number of Carnegie old boys in their squad including Curtis Wilson, Tom Barrett and Mark Tamplin which could throw up some interesting duels, none moreso than Barrett v Leonard at 10. Last weekend Barrett's 50 yard penalty won the game for Roth against newly promoted Ealing. However he did miss 11 points from the boot before that. Leonard's kicking seems to have improved if the Jersey game is any indication. If Curtis sees a lot of the ball then both Stegmann and Holmes will have to defend well to keep him out. Mark Tamplin will have his work cut out in the front row where we do not appear to have any weak links as our replacements against Jersey kept up the tempo set by the starting front row players.
The home side will fancy it's chances with the Clifton Lane pitch as a factor. After our performance last weekend I am more confident in the ability of our forwards to get on top of the Rotherham eight, dominate the play and, if necessary, win the game. Seb Stegmann stated after the Jersey game that our backs want to put together a better performance. I would be happy if they cut out the missed tackles. We still have players such as Casson and Hodgson to come into the team when they are fit so the backs will be under scrutiny.
I do not expect a nine try game on Sunday. We will give a better account of ourselves than we did last season. If the momentum, started in the second half last week, is maintained then a win for us is on the cards. Carnegie by 8!
C'mon Yorkshire!
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11/09/2015 06:17
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2015:09:16:14:04:49 by Gelbel.
As long as it doesn't take us too long to get on the refs wavelength, I think our forwards will prevail.
And, as you said, after last week the back 3 in particular will be itching to get their season started.
A little concerning was that whilst the forwards were impressive, there was an apparent inability to change tempo behind them. It's alright having a strong back 3, but it looked a bit predictable in the backs.
There will be some improvement though this week after that promising start. If there isn't, the changes will come against Ealing.
Hope we win- I absolutely get the "Yorkshire Carnegie" change but shouting "Yorkshire" at Roth when we're being beaten is not much fun
