Gloucester
Burns the boot edges Glaws to narrow win
Freddie B - 19 points
By Cherry Picker
April 4 2010
To listen to Saracens coach Brendan Venter, you’d think Gloucester were lucky to win a thriller by a single point at Kingsholm and needed the help of the ref to guide them to victory. But even allowing for a coach’s natural bias towards his own team, that verdict is way off the mark.
Glaws won – just, admittedly – because they applied themselves well to a difficult game at the end of an even more difficult three-game week.
And because in teenager Freddie Burns they had the player of the match, scoring 19 points and setting up the clinching try for Charlie Sharples.
It’s been an inconsistent and at times frustrating season for Glaws, but coach Bryan redpath appears to have managed to recapture the spirit and work ethic which have for so long been Kingsholm trademark.
His players let themselves down at Newcastle in midweek, but they more than made up for that against a strong Sarries with a win that keeps their hopes of finishing in the top six alive.
Venter told the BBC: "We missed four kicks and we were going to win that game comfortably. When we kept the ball in hand, we looked great. (‘Comfortably’? I think not Brend).
"I have said to the guys, with that kind of rugby we can genuinely win the Premiership. (So why aren’t you winning it then?)
"Every single decision went against us. We did not get one call from the referee, one call from the touch-judge. (Wrong. I can recall at least one, and you did kick three pens.)
Glaws got off to a rocky start as Brad Barritt scored a try, but Shrples’s brace gave Glaws the lead and thanks to Burns’s kicking, two later tries from Sarries weren’t quite enough in a nail-biting finish, Derrick Houggard missing a potential match-winner when his last-gasp penalty was short and wide.
Redpath said: "We got in front at 29-18 and I thought we had done enough.
"Credit to Sarries, they came back. Two of the tries we let through were poor so I was disappointed with that but delighted with the boys' effort.
"The game was not about being pretty, it was about doing the basics well and the biggest criticism from me was that we didn't do the basics right when that was what we needed."
Glaws will be glad of a week’s break now after their recent exertions, their next game on Sunday April 11 when they are away to London Wasps In the Amlin Cup.The GP top six is possible – but with only three gamnes left, it’s not going to be easy. Redpath's top-four dream, meanwhile, is all but over.
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04/04/2010 11:23
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