By Whaley Shark
November 20 2010

Hmmmm….. The board needs something to keep it ticking over, and I haven’t anything in reserve, so I’d better write up last night’s game, then.

We started on the back foot, conceding a couple of penalties within the first five minutes, of which Myler converted one. There then followed a long period of Saints pressure when we only fleetingly got out of our half. However, after we’d lost Aston Croall to a knee injury (apparently only 2-3 weeks out, thank goodness), a Saints attack on the left broke down, the ball went loose and, after some neat handling from Andy Tuilagi and Dwayne Peel, Ben Cohen had enough gas to run in from 60 metres.

Being objective though, that didn’t look like a turning point and the Saints pressure swiftly built again. We withstood an attempted catch and drive, and attacking scrums 5, 10 and 20 metres out, but we were steadily infringing and the series of penalties meant that we never really had the chance to draw breath. As the half drew to a close, Stephen Myler slotted two penalties to go in 7-9 ahead.

The second half opened in much the same way, as we conceded five penalties in 15 minutes. Saints used one of those to set up an attacking lineout in the left corner. Their forwards battered away, then released the ball and an accurate cross kick was patted back to by Elliott on the wing for the full back Tonks to run in on the right. Myler missed the conversion.

We then had one of our better spells of the match. Nick Macleod missed with a long range penalty, then we built a sustained attack and eventually pressured Saints into conceding an easily kickable penalty. Pushing forward again from the restart, we knocked on on the Saints 10 metre line, to start a sequence of events that finally lost us the game. Saints scrum, we concede a penalty, Saints kick to touch on our 22, win the lineout, roll a maul forward. We concede another penalty, Saints kick to the left corner, try a catch and drive, suck in our defence, then spin the ball right for Elliott to cross in the far corner for 10-19 and job done.  The final action of the game was a breakout by substitute McMillan, but play was called back 40 metres for an infringement at the preceding scrum, and Saints ran the clock down without any real trouble.

What did I make of it all? It was always going to be a big challenge for us, and Saints’ dominance in the scrum made for a long, hard evening. It was a very physical, rather scrappy game and I cannot criticise our courage or commitment. Yet again, our defence was outstanding, and allowed us to withstand long periods of Saints pressure without cracking. On balance, I felt we were a little unfortunate not to get a losing bonus point. Oh, and the lineout went OK as well, which is good. My man of the match- Ben Cohen for his try and some sterling defensive tidying up.

Finally, Angel, I’m sorry to say that I don’t owe you a pint!