Gentlemen,

Well a good first win this weekend. We made it hard for ourselves in the first half going to the break 20-14 down. But a strong second half secured the win.

We started shabby conceding 6 consecutive penalties from the kickoff allowing Augusta to secure the first points and take a 3-0 lead. However we dominated for the next 20 minutes and scored two tries from myself and Forrest Woodward. These tries came about once we settled down and started creating clean ball from the rucks. However once we were up 14-3 we fell asleep again and people started not sticking with the game plan. Augusta scored 3 tries in a row as we basically all fell asleep and took a 20-14 lead. We nearly took the lead on the stroke of half time only for the ball to be knocked on over the line.

Second half was much better. We finally started to play together as a team. Forwards were getting to the breakdowns en masse and allowing Stick to get clean ball out to the backline. Once that started happening we were able to get into our groove and string multiple phases together which resulted in us winning the second half 36-0. I believe we scored 5 tries in the 2nd half with Jaime converting 4 of them and adding a penalty. Second half try scorers were Hannibal, Evan, Stick, TJ and one other I can’t remember. Second half was a good example of what we can do once we start to play as a team and create quality ball for us to use.

POSITIVES:

7 tries in the first game. That’s an excellent total and show’s what we can do with good ball.

Winning 2nd half 36-0. Defence was excellent in the 2nd half. We all played with a lot more commitment.

Ball Handling. Our hands were excellent. Very few scrums were given away for knock-ons or forward passes.

NEGATIVES:

Scrums and Lineouts: These were very sloppy. We were screwed on our scrums too many times and we lost too many lineouts on our throw-ins. We need to correct that this week.

Penalties. We gave away far too many penalties. They were for stuff we know we won’t get away with, hands on the ball, not releasing the tackler, offside at the rucks, coming in from the side. We need to play more disciplined.

Setting the ball at the breakdown. This was very sloppy. People weren’t getting a good set in the tackle and the ball was coming back sloppy. We also did not clean out the debris at the breakdown. We let too many August hands come through and either poach the ball or make it sloppy. We have got to clean out those fringes.

FITNESS: We all need to hit the roads more.

So Gentlemen, it is excellent to get the first game of the season under or belt and come away with a resounding win. We have a couple of areas to target in practice this week and we have a lot of excellent blocks to build on.

Also, an excellent win by the GROG over the Archibalds in the first annual Greenville/Augusta Rugby classic. We will be looking for Charles’ write-up on that game.

We now turn to this weeks game which is at home against Myrtle beach. It should be a very tough game so we need 2 good practices this week. See everybody ready to go at 7:00pm on Tuesday.

Good job this weekend.
Dan Roberts
Coach Greenville RFC


Greenville Grffins Rugby Club