By Roth Admin
November 19 2003

It can’t be easy for Mike Schmid to face the press each week after losing one game after another, but as always Mike is ready to answer their questions in an honest and frank manner. Showing true Rotherham spirit, Mike faces the challenge with great dignity. Mike started out by giving a brief summary of his thoughts on the performance. “The last 25 to 30 minutes we finally played a bit of rugby. First half, I didn’t think we were very good at all, I thought we were terrible in fact. We really weren’t achieving what we wanted to achieve whatsoever. We gave the lads a bit of a rollicking at half time. We need to achieve a bit more consistency.

On the positive – In the second half we moved the ball better around the park, we were efficient at breakdown. We played fast breakdown rugby and put the ball to the right people on the right lines. We retained it for long periods to put some phase play together.”

When asked, “who caught your eye in the Rotherham side,” Mike answered.

“I’m a big fan of Jacob’s, I think he works extremely hard in games. The bench came on and really added to the game. Nick, Glen, Russ all came in and made big improvements to what we were doing out there.”

Mike on Newcastle – “Newcastle are exceptionally fast, they create space for fast men and when they do that they create holes. They’re very well drilled and have a young and experienced back line with threats all over the park. And they exposed our weaknesses very very well with speed and pace and support. When they do that, you concede try’s. They are a very good team.

Mike on next weeks game – “We’ve got to build on the last half an hour from today. We’ve got a long learning curve to go on, but we’ve got to start wining some games.

When asked, “What words of encouragement can you offer the faithful Rotherham supporters, Mike replied, “You have to say, we have to take the good with the bad. We’ve certainly had a number of good years and we are used to wining here and we are trying very hard to get back to wining. We want to show on the field 15 guys with heart, putting everything on the line week in week out. If we can do that we hope that they will be proud of what we achieve, whether we are wining games or not. We have to be putting ourselves out to achieve that.

We’re getting it right, the club is continuing to grow and expand and we’ve done that off the field recently. We’re going to continue to do that on the field. So there is progress being made and plans being made for the future to ensure top class for everything here.”