Olly B - 3 pens

By Cherry Picker
February 22 2009

No matter how deep the cherry-coloured tint of your specs and now matter how long you look at the Guinness Premiership table and see Gloucester perched on top, you can’t get away from the fact that from the point of view of winning matches they are not playing very well. and too many winnable matches are being lost. They are not playing badly, but while what they are producing is probably enough to earn them a top four play-off place again, it’s probably not enough to take them much further.
Losing 14-9 at Harlequins, conceding two tries to nil, may not be the end of the world and those who don’t bother taking off those tinted glasses will say Glaws deserved to win.
But you don’t get points for deserving to win – you get them for winning, and blaming the ref or the opposition’s tactics is not good enough.
Professional rugby teams need to win games, and doing so by scoring lucky penalties or forward-pass tries is better than losing.
At the Stoop, Glaws played their part in a close game, but it was Quins who got the tries, one early before Glaws settled and one late when the Cherry and Whites were battling for a win.
Olly Barkley’s three penalties might have helped Glaws hold the lead for a long time, but it was never comfortable as Glaws once again failed to grind out a result because they made vital, sometimes schoolboy, errors.
Dean Ryan told BBC: "We worked hard enough to win, but when we keep putting ourselves under pressure these things are going to happen.
"We have a responsibility to get ourselves out of there. The last thing I want is this side to be a kicking side, but you have to protect yourself and we are just not doing it well enough.
"We did get a bonus point away from home, but I'm frustrated because I want this side to be so much better.
"I'm not one to analyse the last minute. Our faults lay earlier in the game."
As we said earlier, it’s not the end of the world. But current Glaws form isn’t the beginning of a title-winning run to the end of the season, either.

Good - but not good enough Glaws

Discussion started by Shedloads (IP Logged), 22/02/2009 10:42

Shedloads
22/02/2009 10:42

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cheerycherry
22/02/2009 11:43

Glaws need to make their collective minds up about the style of play they want. At the moment the running game looks disorganised, the ball is arriving wide but so are three or four defending players because they have not been sucked in earlier. Another feature of yesterday were certain Glaws forwards standing out amongst the 3/4s again causing congestion. Against Irish and Sale it was a good forward effort because they were committing to the breakdown but yesterday there were a couple of plodding forwards who seemed intent on playing at centre and ended up getting in the way, causing confusion and slowing attacking moves down.

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Two Sheds
22/02/2009 12:00

Agreed cc ... basically, they are top of the table DESPITE themselves. Seems stange moaning when they are top, but it's so frustrating when you can see how much better they might be. Must be frustrating for DR as well.

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Filthy Ralph
22/02/2009 13:27

This is nonsense! Forwards ending up in the three quarters is just part and parcel of the modern game as they go through the phases. This shows a lack of basic knowledge of the game.

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