Been a few days but to be fair I am in London flat hunting at the mo. The only Welsh rugby game I caught (or any Magners league game for that matter) was the Cardiff Blues vs Edinburgh game on TV. I did make it to the Guinness Premiership double header at Twickenham but that’s another matter.
As for the Cardiff Blues game -well it was a bit of a mes wasn’t it? Ok the last 20 minutes or so saw a dramatic improvement but on the whole it looked like they hadn’t even bothered with a preseason. Certainly didn’t hit the ground running and were lucky to be in teh game at all – an awful decision from the linesman to allow the Chris Czekaj try.
Gareth Cooper was awful. Poor service, flapping around at the base of rucks and no direction at all. Sam Norton-Knight was even worse though, awful kicks, rubbish hands and sitting far, far too deep. Only Robin Sowden-Taylor looked on their level of patheticness, rushing out of the line, failing to compete at the breakdwon. The entire game turned around when those 3 came off the park.
But let’s not be quite so negative. Bradley Davies was impressive, carrying, rucking, competing… if he carries on that form and he will be competing on a level playing field with Gough and Ian Evans for the spot to partner Alun-Wyn Jones.
Molitika and Xavier Rush came into the game as it went on, reminding us that they are still class acts that will be better as the season goes on – though how Rush won Man of the Match is beyond me. Czekaj looked like he is finally starting to back himself on occassions, though was at fault a few times defensively. Ben Blair may have mixed the good with the bad but he is rusty after injury and will only improve.
With the British Lions such as Jamie Roberts yet to come back there is hope that things will get better. And Cooper and SNK can’t play that badly again.
Can they?
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Not so sure that SNK can put this stuff right, he got so much wrong. One could excuse rustiness (and hence kicking out of hand, etc.) to a degree, but he seemed clueless. No idea where to stand, no signals to the forwards/backs. At some points it actually looked like his team were ignoring him. In short he looks like I’d look if I just rolled up and decided to play 10 one night. So how can he possibly put that right? He has to start against Munster, and play most of the game, so we can see if he’s got anything to offer or whether we need to get the lawyers sorting out contract termination. I can’t remember such a woeful start for any player. He looked massively out of his depth.