Teams up v Saracens

[Bowden Tiger]

With regard to Burns & Williams, I would swap them. I think Williams is a great reader of the game and I am certain that he would make a cracking full back. I believe that Burns is a natural flyhalf as he is a quick thinker, moves well off either leg, and is lightening over the first few paces. If left to develop with Youngs we could have a pairing that would be there for many years.

I thought Doyle had an absolute mare, bordering on incompetence. His inability to control blatant gamesmanship and time wasting in that last scrum, was a joke. I think their tight head was dropping it to order, and he eventually did penalise him, but only when so much time had been lost!

[GS]

We did well against a clinical Sarries team. Radio Leicester did an analysis of their defensive record and it's very impressive with a ridiculously low tries against record and doing the simple stuff well. The rush defence may live offside but as Austin said when playing for Tigers, 'It's only illegal if you get caught'. They remind me of us 10 plus years ago, confident and clinical with a focus that pervades the whole team/set up.

We were good in the scrums and the defence looked good, only being breached by a cock up, but we'll need more than that away next week. Games are won by the forwards and we're not there yet. Our glory days were built around the pack, remember how we sympathised with Wiggy when he was the only one not going to the World Cup in 2003 (and the problems that caused for Deano)? The actual scrum is looking better but we miss the ability to read the opposition lineouts, something Parling excelled at, leading to too many unopposed lineouts. The return of Croft and his ability in the air might help here. The legendary 'catch and drive' that brought so many tries for Back needs resurrecting ASAP, and its defence.

There's nothing much we can do about the backs with our best out for most, if not all, of the season. But they did seems better last season, Betham for one.

The last thing that looks iffy is the replacements policy. What is the point in giving a player 5 or 10 minutes to have an effect on the game? Why sit and watch a player who is obviously struggling below par? If his replacement isn't good enough surely he shouldn't be on the bench, unless it's a chance against a lesser team (and in our case they are getting fewer ).

As for next week? It all depends on who is fit on Tuesday and if the home and away on/off switch can be by-passed. Fingers crossed.

[h's dad]

Brain fades cost us. The six inches between the ears. Their pressure caused these errors.

BTW Never accompanied by bad language. One sure way of getting zero respect is to lose control of your vocabulary. Get them onside the first time and build from there. They make the right calls more often. They "buy in to your ethic". The team talks change. Sound familiar? We played against it today.
Agreed it was much much better. But we have to get the brain fades out of the game.

Apologies to everybody else as it is seriously off topic but it is a fascinating subject. Not disagreeing with you on the bad language Big Dai and it should certainly be considered in an age appropriate environment, but:

'Abstract
As several researchers have now shown, swearing is not necessarily offensive, indeed it often functions much more positively as a marker of solidarity and group membership (Daly, Holmes, Newton and Stubbe 2004; Stapleton 2003). While there is no doubt that many people continue to find swearing offensive, and it is considered inappropriate in many contexts, in some it is the opposite. Indeed, for some social groups and communities frequent swearing is the norm.
This paper presents an analysis of the function of swearing within a context in which high frequency swearing is a group norm: a male rugby team. In this team, swearing is used for a variety of functions, but of particular interest here is its use in performing leadership duties such as pre-match motivation. It is in the pre-match motivational huddle that swearing is at its most frequent within the team, however it can also be found in a very different context: backstage interactions (Coates 1999; Goffman 1959; Hughey 2011; Richards 2010; Wittenberg-Lyles, Cie’ Gee, Oliver and Demiris 2009). To this end, both frontstage and backstage use of swearing in the leadership discourse of the rugby team is analysed. A quantitative analysis of the frequency of swearwords and their function in team leadership discourse is presented, followed by a qualitative analysis of an example from each type of leadership discourse. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate not only that swearing can be used to engender solidarity, but that a range of functions of swearing such as intensifying, othering, exclaiming annoyance, and indexing a vernacular identity, can all be used in performing leadership.
The data upon which this paper is based was gathered through detailed ethnographic fieldwork with the rugby team, allowing full recording access to all aspects of team interaction. The team in question was an amateur team in New Zealand, however other research on rugby in the UK, combined with the author’s own rugby playing experiences has shown that the level of swearing found in this team may be regarded as commonplace in a rugby context.
http://orca.cf.ac.uk/48074/

There is plenty more.

[fleabane]

Interesting about swearing.

I had a long talk with Heneke Meyer who said he was shocked by the use of bad language and shouting in the changing room before a match. In South Africa, the teams sat quietly, thinking about their role in the team, and what they personally had to achieve.

[h's dad]

As a matter of interest does anybody know who was dropped by SCW after the Royal Marines commented on his attitude?

Go on then, I dare you

Unless it's Roly, I really don't know.