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News
Greenville Wins Again...On
the Road, the Long Road
February 12, 2007 -- This past weekend the Greenivlle Griffins
literally got on the long road towards the D2 playoffs for their
first road match of the 2007 matrix season. With 24 players
the Griffins made the 13 hour round trip journey north to face
a deployment drained Camp LJ side just outside of Jacksonville
North Carolina. The journey was indeed long but the results
on the pitch, and the friendships forged with the LJ side off
of the pitch certainly made the trip worth while.
After a ridiculously long ride and a lengthly delay waiting for the match
offical to show up from the previous match that he handled earlier in the
day (Charleston 41 - Cape Fear 32) things got underway just before 4:00pm.
It did not take long for the mixture of expectations and hopes of a large
walk over victory with try raining down from the heavens on everyone to
transform into the reality of this being a side of players still on the
upward curve of getting used to playing together.
The first half was played all over the park but failed to show any
direction in terms of a unified pattern of attack. The Griffins manged to
hold a majority of the time and territorial statistics in their favor but
failed to capitilise on several scoring opportunities. There was a lot of
miscommunication and several instances where individuals carried on one
step too far. With that being said Greenville did manage to come out of
the first half with a solid 22 - 7 lead through 3 tries, 2 conversions,
and 1 penalty (Try: Mike "Tex" Miller, Brett Ferreria, Zach Hunt. Conv:
Jonathan Mullikin x 2. Pen: Mullikin)
Between the long ride up and the less than spectacular performance in the
first half coach Cobb was clearly not happy with the way things were
going. His comments were short and direct. "I don't know what you guys
are trying to do out there but you are not doing what you are trained to
do. Start getting back to the basics. Run straight, communicate, ruck,
run straight again, and score some tries".
With that and the addition of super sub Dan Roberts the Griffins started
to show some more discipline during the second half of the match.
Everyone started to show a little higher work rate and the point of attack
seemed to gain the focus that it lacked during the first 40 minutes of the
match. Again dominating both the time and territorial statistics
Greenville added another 3 tries, 1 conversion, and 2 penalties (Try: Dan
Roberts x 2 and Tex Miller. Con: Mullikin, Pen: Mullikin x 2) to wrap up
their first road victory of the season by a solid 42 - 7 margin.
On any other typical Saturday afternoon it would be easy to be happy with
this vicotry. Because the Griffins have such high expectations for the
2007 matrix season it is just as easy to be a litle frustrated by the
final result. Camp LJ put up a good fight and coming out ahead 42 - 7 is
something to be proud of, however it took much too long for the Griffins
to focus their attack. Heading into week three of the competition in the
second spot on the table with 6 points and a game in hand, the Griffins
will be gearing up for a crucial home match against a physical Cape Fear
side with 4 points of their own and with their backs against the wall in a
must win match. |
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