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Hard to be disappointed

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Rossm:
Hate to state the obvious but Toulouse aren't second in the Top 14 for nothing. They always (IMO only) looked more dangerous and definitely more cohesive. I know it's a cliché but we can now concentrate on the league. Top 6 finish is essential. I'm not too bothered about the playoffs. If we get there we will only be playing away.

Vespula Vulgaris:

--- Quote from: Rossm on December 08, 2018, 09:38:42 PM ---Hate to state the obvious but Toulouse aren't second in the Top 14 for nothing. They always (IMO only) looked more dangerous and definitely more cohesive. I know it's a cliché but we can now concentrate on the league. Top 6 finish is essential. I'm not too bothered about the playoffs. If we get there we will only be playing away.

--- End quote ---

At this rate if we get to the end of the season and we can still field a full team I'll be happy.

bargepole:

--- Quote from: Vespula Vulgaris on December 08, 2018, 09:14:51 PM ---... I don't subscribe to the prevailing view elsewhere that Lima is actually the devil and gives babies cancer in his spare time, but I do think we have to give the guy the opportunity to show what he can do with a stable platform.  He has moments of absolute brilliance and you don't start for the ABs at 10 unless you are truly gifted.

--- End quote ---

I'm one of those who has expressed disappointment with his overall performances. He showed one flash of brilliance today, when he suddenly decided to accelereate through a gap, and made a lot of yards through the Toulouse defence which should have produced a try. On the debit side, both Toulouse tries came after he missed tackles he should have made.

Our forwards put in a lot of hard graft, particularly both second rows, but there was absolutely no sparkle in the back play, epitomised near the end when WLR passed the ball to nobody in particular, and it rolled harmlessy into touch. Bassett and Neal tried hard with limited opportunities, but most of the time if they got the ball, it was with two or three red shirts on top of them.

We may as well put out second string / academy teams now for the next three Euro fixtures, probably a blessing in disguise that we won't be troubling the quarter finals, and try and keep enough players fit so that we can have a strong finish to the season, and at least make the top 6 of the Prem.

Neils:
Just back. Beautiful drive with many stars unlike our team.
On today I would gladly show Hughes the door as he coughed up ball after ball and then got himself injured again. Both WLR and Daly did not play like major internationals.
I totally agree with Nelly on Ref link Brad was the voice constantly in the refs ear. I heard Daly once. He is not a captain. I was impressed by Neal and Booj again. Josh kept trying. The much maligned Rowland seemed to me to be all over the place.
However the amount of ball given up was tragic either stripped or spilt. Too many soft hands.
Brookes played well but just in front of us was obviously in agony with his ribs. Stuart was shown to be lacking nouse by his opposite number in the scrum.
Lima by his own admission is finding it difficult. His penalty that went too far was him trying too hard. His service from others was crap in the most.
We are out of Europe now so what kind of team do we or can we put out. Toulouse will take no prisoners next week.

wasps:
Well, I found that hugely disappointing.
By the second half, it became clear that if we went through enough phases we would get turned over, either by a strip in the tackle or a knock on. Time and again it happened. Most of the time that we did have ball in hand we didn't seem to be causing them many problems. On the occasions we did, we knocked on.

This isn't a new thing, it's happened to us in previous years too where we were always complaining about our lack of ability to close games out because we were unable to retain possession and go through phases.

This is absolutely NOT a "Dai out", "coaches out", or "players out" type of post.
However, it's gotta be a technical issue that causes us to drop so much ball, or get stripped so often.
Part of the problem is that we still through some low percentage offloads that aren't going to be held every time. Brookes dropped one in the 2nd half but it was hardly a sympathetic offload to him.


The impressive thing is that we were never really out of the game even though our basics were so poor.
We started quite strongly and I was impressed with or intensity early on.

It's a bit of a ridiculous thing to say, but if we had held onto the ball at crucial times, we could have run away with that game today, which would have felt ridiculous given how poor we actually were.

Toulouse are a very strong side, with a lot of heritage, yet even such a poor performance from us with so many errors, and we were close all the way.


I am hugely disappointed, but I'm really not sure how I feel about the bigger picture.
I can't decide if it's a combo of confidence and bedding in causing these problems. It easily could be, and if so, then it'll all go away overnight one day.

I've not been back to DW since it last went down.... I think I'll stay away a bit longer now

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