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Unfortunately as you all know we suffered our first defeat of the season last week against the Nottingham Outlaws.

It turned out to be a frustrating day all round to be honest starting with 2 players arriving late for the coach due to work commitments.

This had a massive bearing on our build up to the game giving us no time to warm up correctly and talk as a collective unit.

In fairness though we put in enough hard work during the week to counter this, but players being creatures of habit I guess not having the correct build up kind of threw them off the task at hand.

We started the match poorly and gave away needless penalties which gave the outlaws crucial field position.

My guys have to learn that in order for us to be in a position to win tight games we cant afford to give away stupid needless penalties which for me is becoming a worrying trend recently.

The lads have now decided to fine themselves every time they are penalised, so fingers crossed going forward it shouldn’t be such an area of concern (especially if your as tight as John Elliker).

Like I said if you give a side as good as Nottingham crucial field position you are going to pay the price regardless what side you are and to our cost we found ourselves down on the scoreboard almost straight away.

The frustrating thing for me was that we never executed what we had done in training all week. Sloppy passing,poor communication and wanting to get involved in an arm wrestle were not what we trained to do.

Come halftime and a chance to re-evaluate things the guys started playing how they can and with 10 mins to go I felt the Outlaws were dead on their feet and there for the taking.

Again though due to poor communication and poor last tackle options we couldn’t get over the finish line and Nottingham killed the game with a late try.

Hand on heart they were the better side throughout and we didn’t deserve to win.

it was a valuable lesson for all concerned and credit to the boys that they were all man enough to admit that a bit of complacency had crept into their game and they are keen to make amends this weekend against Liverpool.

Fingers crossed this happens and we get back to winning ways.

Yours
Mark Butterill.

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