Centrale Paris Anciens Rugby Club vs. BRFC: 11-7

That was a hard start to the league and a timely reality check after two huge wins.

A young mobile team moved us around early in the game before tiring in the second half, which then allowed us to dominate them and build momentum. An early score for them off our mistake, losing the ball in contact, and a good counter attack into space, saw BRFC on the back foot. Outside of that it was pretty even in the first half, although we never worked enough phases to really threaten them in their 22. Second half was much better with us building momentum and putting some phases together, a disallowed try and a good opportunistic try to us from a mistake in their attack, saw the game finish 11-7 to them.

It’s not really worth talking about more than that. Overall, not our best performance, but not our worst, some great play from a few key individuals but we lost sight of what we wanted to do as a team. Tom was excellent at 9, good service and great darting runs to keep their back row honest. Neal was strong when he stepped in for Tom in the second half. Good debut from Fred at 7, smashing their 10 on a couple of occasions which unsettled them in attack. But we’re going to go for two “Man of the Matches” this week, first one was Nick at 6 who tackled everything that moved, supported at every phase and generally ran himself into the ground, the other was Charles at 12 who ran direct, tackled solidly, broke the defensive line on a number of occasions and never lost site of what we were trying to do.

Should we have won? Yes, but we didn’t. Yes we had a try disallowed, yes the ref was rubbish, yes they were coming off their feet and killing the breakdowns, but none of that lost the game for us. What did lose the game for us was;

• Composure
• Bad Discipline

Composure:

We didn’t need to chase that game, it was one score, and we just panicked from the minute it happened because it was an easy try. What we should have done was just batten down the hatches and suffocate them. Our pack was bigger then theirs and we saw how they tired towards the end of the game, another five min’s and we’d have had another score. They didn’t stop asking the ref when time would be up.

We need to be realistic - we don't have the fitness and the skill level to play off the cuff rugby when under pressure. We do however have a game plan. The reason we have a game plan is because it’s simple but effective rugby and we can revert to it under pressure, so we all know what we are doing. That means when we have to do the hard work we do it, we don’t abandon that and start slinging the ball left and right in our own half, we play the corners and put them under pressure. We make good targets for the back row and we work the phases to break down defences – which is exactly what they did to us in the first 15 minutes.

Discipline:

We know from seasons past that refs won’t favour us. We need to just take these things on the chin and take the game away from these people which we’re more then capable of doing. We can’t have people abusing the ref on and off the pitch, be that players subs or spectators. We’re all passionate and we all want to win the game, but we can’t cross certain lines. We need to be sensible, two yellow cards is a €200 fine for the club, if the ref puts in a complaint about us in his official report it could be a lot worse then that, and it will be entirely our own fault.

We can’t have shouting and arguing on the pitch with each other. We can’t have people refusing to stick to the game plan because they want to do something different – all this will lead to is team mates not knowing what’s going on and the whole team being at a disadvantage.

We are a team, we are selected as a team and we play as a team from start to finish; but more importantly we’re a group of friends, and that means not being selfish and playing for the team. The sole person permitted to address the referee is the Captain – and that’s the way we will approach the issue from now on.

So we move on from a tight loss, that while massively disappointing isn’t a disaster; and this is how we’ll do it.

This week attending training is more important than ever. We need to work through the game plans and the patterns. So that means we all need to make an effort to train together as a team - if there is a reason you cannot make training, we need to know in advance. Commitment to training is a criterion for team selection, if there is a tight call we’ll go with the guy who’s been training, it’s already happened this season much to a few players disappointment.

We’ll move the training start time back by 30 mins to allow people to get there, that means training at;

• Sevres Tuesday: 8.30 till 10: meeting time 8pm at Pont de Sevres.
• Domont Thursday: 8.30-10pm, meeting time 7.30 at GDN.

We are counting on you.

Graeme, BRFC Coach

Rob, BRFC Captain