By Elliott Josypenko
November 29 2004

This was my first visit to the Butts Arena and I was very impressed. Although it's only in the first-phase of development, it looks great and should be a wonderful place to go in the future. The pitch was also incredible considering the number of midweek games played on that pitch. Today we watched Bees play their worst, and best rugby for a long time. Today was a bit of a mixed day for me. Firstly I played rugby for my school (losing to a school from Rugby). I scored a try, but got a hit on my head rendering me very unwell later in the day. This resulted in me getting to Coventry with 25 minutes gone in the game, and myself struggling to see anything, and having a killing head-ache. This was my first visit to the Butts Arena and I was very impressed. Although it's only in the first-phase of development, it looks great and should be a wonderful place to go in the future. The pitch was also incredible considering the number of midweek games played on that pitch. The only problems were the Peter Kay style PA announcer who because of the poor sound system, sounded like he had his hand over his mouth, and the seats in the small stand (opposite the main stand) which seemed to fall apart all the time. Weren't they from Sixways originally? The clubhouse (where the England game was shown) also looked very impressive. So, to the game. As I said earlier, I arrived after around 25 minutes and at this point Bees were 7 points down. The first half was quite embarrasing to be honest with Bees going into the halftime break twenty nil down. Canadian international Nik Witkowski and Wales Under-21 number eight Tom Brown scored tries when Coventry stretched the visitors' defence with sustained attacks and Matt Leek tagged on two conversions and a penalty and full-back Gareth Cull a penalty. Bees should have scored a try in the corner but Aaron Takarangi dropped the ball over the line after having done the hard work prompting donkey chants from the large Coventry support. Just before the half time break a very curious incident occured. Coventry were going forward and Nathan Carter came into a ruck from the side and picked the ball up. A penalty was promptly given but Carter didn't drop the ball. This prompted a barrage of punches from one of the Coventry players and Carter did not retaliate once. This was all one way traffic. The referee took the two aside and gave them a warning, with no reversal of the penalty despite the player deserving this. The referee appeared to condone this behaviour. Later on in the half Bees were attacking and at a breakdown Paul Knight and one of the Coventry back-row were given an early half time orange. I saw nothing of the incident so I don't know quite what happened. At this point it looked like the game would descend into a bit of a punch up. Fortunately this didn't happen and the game calmed down. The main problems with the Bees play was that there was very little decisiveness in the play. They didn't really look like they wanted to win it. The tackling was poor and possesion was often wasted because of panicking. At half time I would have probably put money on the score escalating further especially when the doctor was called to the Bees changing room, but the second half change was incredible. Bees hit Coventry with four unanswered tries after the break in a remarkable turnaround. I don't know what Phil said during the break, but it worked a treat. I've never seen a Bees team want it so much (except February 29th last year). Every tackle was hard and the play was wonderful. The Bees players were phenomenal in the second half. Messrs Takarangi, Knight (D), Thorp and Carter all had incredible games. I've never seen Jim Thorp take the ball on like he did today. To be honest, I can't really remember what happened in the second half, it was all a bit of a rush, perhaps I should take a notepad with me. With both sides temporarily down to 14 just after half-time, Bees managed to gain a 7 point claw back on the defacit when a spell of intense forward "boshing" led to an overlap which allowed Nathan Carter to scamper in at the corner, and Walshie added the two from wide out. Cov gave away a penalty and Walsh hit to the corner and from the catch and drive, Matt Miles was put over the try line to make the score 20-14. With Bees needing just a try to win the game and around 15 minutes left on the clock, Coventry stepped up the pace and the tired Bees defence gave Coventry a penalty in front of the posts from a long way out which Cull duly added. This meant that Bees needed 10 points to win. Bees then gave a final onslaught on the Coventry line and following loads of possesion in the 22, the ball was turned over and cleared by the Cov fly half. The ball went straight to Aaron T who took a good catch above his head, ran inside over to the far wing, beat a man and gave a wonderful pass to opposite winger Roman Piotrowski who ran in the try which Walshy converted reducing the gap to 2 points. Bees received the ball from the kick off (perhaps one of the flaws of the rules nowadays. In rugby league and 7s the try scorer kicks to the other team) and attacked again through props Jim Thorp and Martin O'Keefe. The ball then popped to Captain Ed close to the wing who made a break, got tackled and tried to offload the ball to a supporter. He had inadvertantly passed the ball to the Coventry winger but then made up for the error by tackling him and wrestling the ball away from him. Some more "boshing" from O'Keefe and Miles led to Tim Walsh having an opportunity at a drop goal. From just 20 yards out, in front of the posts he scuffed the kick wide. With 44 minutes showing on the clock Coventry dropped out and the ball got recycled to Walsh who had another attempt from a lot further out. This kick got half charged down but very luckily went to Jim Thorp (played onside due to the charge down) just inside the Coventry 22. He passed inside to Dave Knight who was supporting who made good ground beating a few players, who then passed outside to Duncan White who belly-flopped over the line. Walsh then added the extras (although they didn't matter), to start the celebrations for the large numbers of travelling fans.