By John Wilkinson, Coventry Telegraph
November 2 2009

RUGBY director Phil Maynard concedes that Coventry were caught cold by the sheer intensity of Bristol’s start in Friday night’s 46-28 Championship defeat at The Memorial Ground. Behind after four minutes, Cov conceded five tries before half-time and were left with far too much to do, despite a battling recovery which brought them back to within bonus point range midway through the third quarter.

“It was the quickest 10 to 15 minutes I’ve ever had in the Championship,” said Maynard. “We came up against a brick wall.

“Bristol had had a tough week after losing at Doncaster, they had a lot to prove to justify their £2 million playing budget and we knew it was never going to be anything but tough.

“But that said, we just didn’t come out of the blocks and they shouldn’t have been able to break us down off first phase, which was what was happening. We have got to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

“The squad knows that our first half was poor. We were under pressure in the scrum and didn’t contest the tackle area the way we should and as a consequence there were far too many turnovers.

“We were a different side for most of the second half, and to end up scoring 28 points away from home and have nothing to show for it is disappointing, but we have to move on and get things right for London Welsh at home on Friday night.”

Maynard is waiting for news on fly-half Joe Carlisle, who twisted his knee while scoring Cov’s opening try and was their stand-out player in the first 40 minutes. “We won’t know how it is until the start of the week,” he said. “He scored an outstanding individual try, and we’ll never know what difference he might have made to the final outcome if he had stayed on.”

On-loan Cov winger Kurt Johnson, coming back to fitness after a run of injuries, marked his first gamer of the season with two tries for Stourbridge in their 95-5 home win over Manchester in National League One.

Cov 'caught cold'

Discussion started by Unofficial Coventry Rugby (IP Logged), 02/11/2009 17:53

Unofficial Coventry Rugby
02/11/2009 17:53

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