Match thread

[Heathen]

I think our issues from yesterday and the Sale game were almost identical and for me are more psychological than anything else.  Both times we got on the wrong side of the ref, or got frustrated with the way the game was being reffed.

When that happens, we tend to lose our heads a bit.  The frustration leads to penalties, which puts pressure on us and we then try to force things putting more pressure on us. 

It’s almost like we need to reset and either find a way to contain our frustrations or trust our game or try and change the way we’re playing to fall in line with the game is being reffed. 

Despite being pinged a lot in the first half, we know we can score tries quickly so think we needed to be a little more patient with ourselves, trust our defence and then go full beans when it was on.  Alfie was probably prime suspect of trying too hard - flying out of the line etc...

That's where strong leadership on the pitch is needed.

[InBetweenWasp]

Agreed Heathen and it's easy for us to say that, but using the Sale game as an example, even Launch looked totally frustrated with the Ref.  So even for some of our most experienced players, it's something that I think needs some working out. 

Haskell likens trying to change tactics on the pitch as like trying to turn an oil-tanker, to get 15 players to change the tactics and thinking that's been drummed into them all week and all with different levels of fatigue is easier said than done.

I'm not sure what the fix is, but was more an observation that we get sucked into a self-destruct type cycle when these things start to happen.

[matelot22]

Thing is, when a game is reffed so badly/inconsistently, I don't see how you can adapt. It reminds me of a referee we had on one of the ships I served on, if we were playing in a foreign port and he reffed the game, he would overcompensate for being "one of us" and ping us for absolutely everything, while frequently missing the same offences by the opposition, we'd seldom win if he reffed us.. Smales' performance seemed very similar to me.