By Loose Head
November 20 2002

Loose Head is Depressed -- The last couple of games have seen us abused by a ref who clearly has a problem with Wasps and then throw a game through stupid errors. I am afraid that no-one other than the players can be blamed for the farce against Harleyqueens. Ooogie just isn't delivering the goods. He may have bags of potential, be a fearsome size for a centre, a straight hard runner, but if he regularly drops the ball in contact what's the point having him there? Try scoring chances came and went.

I bet everyone is relieved that the players are wearing those natty gloves. Otherwise there would be loads of handling errors. That's an attempt at irony by the way. OK, here’s a rather direct way of looking at it. If the players are saying that the gloves help ball handling what reasons are there for all the drops? The state of the ball is compensated for (supposedly) so what is left? Incompetence?

There was a re-emergence of the Wasps 22 disease. The symptoms are a rush of blood to any other part of the body other than the cerebral cortex resulting in something brainless. The result being repeated failure to score when camped in the opposition 22. This could be, typically, the forwards drive a maul up field, completely overwhelming the oppo forwards. Drive, ruck drive – it has worked wonders in recent games. Then with five or six yards to go one of them breaks off and runs on a diagonal line away from the rest of his pack, gets held up, isolated and the ball turned over. Another symptom may be an inability to properly see that person who is running beside you – which may cause you to not pass at all or pass to where you think he is.

Harleyqueens played well but they were hardly insurmountable. Is this going to be another one of those years when we lament a lowly finish and look back to a few games before Christmas that we should have won?

Loose Head