By Duncan Wood
August 26 2002

I caught up with Bristol head coach Peter Thorburn immediately after the Ebbw Vale game and was able to ask him about the team and individual performances. He was very frank about what went well and what didn't.

“A win’s a win”, stated the Kiwi after the game. “If we play like that we won’t beat Sarries next week but there are a lot of positive things.”

“As I’ve said, I think we’re two or three weeks away from being as organised as we’d like to be. Some of the things that we were trying to achieve, we did quite well in the first half. But then, after half an hour, our tackling fell away a little bit which got their tails up and got them back into the game.”

“The line outs in the first half were excellent and our scrums were good but, as I say, we just well away a little bit in the last half and they got into the game and used the wind well in the second half and kept us under pressure a bit.”

“I’m pleased that we did a lot of the things that we were trying to do quite well but there’s still a lot of work to do as all coaches say.”

Quizzed on the areas to be worked on ahead of the visit of Saracens next weekend, Thorburn was aware of what needs to be improved.

“Just being a bit tidier around the drives and getting our timing right at lineout time and really just around the phase ball. It’s not new so much as early season for players to instinctively go to where they need to go to do their job around the breakdowns.”

He was then asked if he was concerned about conceding the early score so soon after the half time break.

“We seem to have that habit of letting people in after half time or before half time and after we’ve scored. I know they put us under pressure from the kick off and there was a mistake of some sort that kept them down there. We made another mistake and it was gone. 10 just ran straight through. But they drove well initially which drew our defence in which is what you try to do.”

"They (the players) have to keep alert but that’s something that happens with the urgency of the game. It should have happened after half time and makes coaches wonder why they bother saying things at half time! But you have to give a bit of credit to Ebbw Vale. They ground it out really well.”

 Thorburn confirmed that the likes of Alex Brown and Julian White had come through their first outings since surgery unscathed.

 “They came through really well. They’ve been training really well. They’re probably short of a full match but that was the point of today. But, by the same token, Scott Morgan did very well in his half. Emi Bergamaschi I think is playing outstandingly well…He’s turning into a really valuable asset.”

On the subject of Craig Short’s injury:

 “He’s rolled his ankle but he’s a pretty tough individual and those things came come right pretty quickly. It’s too soon to say, he’s a bit sore at the moment but it’s only a sprain. It'll come right after a few days”

On the positives from the Ebbw Vale game:

"Well, we got a good, hard game under our belts. The lineouts particularly in the first half were outstanding - we could have varied things a bit more but the actual throwing and taking were spot on."

"To be fair on the guys, we've had a really hard two weeks. We played three games in Ireland and then we had a real hard week training so some of them are probably a bit dead in the legs. Next week we won't train as physically as we did in the last week."