Montpellier v Ospreys EPCR Challenge Cup Sat Dec 14 at 1pm

I don’t mean to belabour the criticism but only last week TB was saying “ we love this competition, we are a cup side and it brings out the best in us”.

What are the off field issues?

Obvious points I appreciate, but last year we largely competed via the scrum, maul and pick and go tries. The scrum this year has been greatly diminished. Nicky has moved on and hasn’t been adequately replaced, Botha is a year older (and we rode our luck last season that he didn’t pick up any major knocks) and Henry has been injured. Warren hopefully will turn into a tidy player for us but will he ever be a destructive scrummager? Likely not.

The maul hasn’t been clicking. It seems to me that may be because of the injuries in the forwards, but I’ll let those with greater rugby knowledge than mine (ie more or less everyone!) give a more informed view.

And the issues with the above have (re)emphasised the paucity of our back play. This is admittedly harsh, but unless there’s a noticeable improvement by the end of the season, they need to move Fussell on or put him in a different role. He’s had enough time.

And we seem to have lost for want of a better word some of the intensity we had last season. Again, could be injury-related.

As others have said I don’t know if Toby effectively being a lame duck is also a factor / there have been or are some off-field shenanigans going on that aren’t widely known.

It’s frustrating as we’re a small number of players and a coach or two away from being a tidy team.

Most coaches have a shelf life. I tend to think the reasons we have not kicked on this year is primarily the concentration of injuries in key positions. Lets see what Christmas brings. We certainly need to improve. Our attack breaking down is meaning the opposition have more chance of scoring than we do when we have the ball

I know there have been injuries but our attack is vary uninspiring and predictable. A talent like Walsh very rarely enters the line at any angle. The are no inside passes, dummy runners never engage defenders and the back row are very slow in supporter ball carriers. Surly these simple plays should be second nature to all squad players

I agree Steve our attack is very vanilla and very predictable. Our ability to generate quick ball is non existent. Jones and Tips need to start thinking about that now. And recruiting both a decent attack and contact assistant coaches.

All good and fair thoughts. I would not underestimate the physical and mental problems of a 6 day turn around against a team two thirds of which had a14 day turn around and one third had an 8 day turn around.

Fiddler was there any plus points that you could see, was the lineout secure? did the half backs have any control? or anything that can be carried forward into next week?

Thanks Wayne

Very little Wayne. We were reasonable for 10 minutes at the beginning and 10 minutes at the end but in between terrible. Warren was heavily penalised and warned. Henry improved but against their second choice loose head. So many handling errors and losing the breakdown. Half backs could not control as we were beaten in set piece and contact area. We overplayed in the wrong parts of the field after going 14-0 down with them needing to do very little for their two tries. They looked like a side that had two weeks rest. We looked like a side that had a 6 day turn around. We were physically outmatched.

We did win the Toss

We certainly got on the wrong side of the referee. A couple of tries in garbage time but we just ran around like headless chickens dropped the ball got no go forward and fell of tackles. They did not need to get out of second gear just wait for our mistakes. We played well for 10 minutes and then just fell apart.

26-3 as half time approaches.

Are you watching the game? If so, how?

Eprc tv have to pay 8 euro. They are just too strong and our error count is through the roof

I'm out watching the boy playing rugby and I just had the wife looking for the game but no joy it seems.

Ok cheers mate.

I'm following the game on the EPCR website and Montpellier just scored a try.