No sparkle in the rain for South

The latest game in N3M welcomed Nuneaton to Welford Road on a wet and overcast day. South made changes from the away day in Newport with Will Ward returning and Will Falle making his debut in the centre. Ed Hopkins, Stu Bale and Aaron Langan making up the bench.

It was obvious that conditions would have a bearing on proceedings from the word go as both sides struggled to hang onto the ball especially in contact.
South started the better and forced the visitors to defend for long periods, but were only rewarded with a solitary Mark Lord penalty when they should really have crossed after good approach work. Both Lee Robinson and Luke Coltman were to the fore, but ultimately poor decision making at crucial times let the visitors off the hook.
Nuneaton equalised with a penalty of their own. A charged down South kick, while in the Nuns 22, lead to a scrambled kick and chase for the visitors as they went the length of the field to score under the posts. The conversion was a formality making the score 3-10 as half time approached. The visitors confidence increased and South's first up tackling was ragged as Nuns began to dominate.South then lost Josh McLaurin to a yellow card and the heavens opened. It was obvious from that point on that Nuneaton had adapted better to the conditions and the increased vagaries of the referee.
Nuns kept the ball close and rumbled through phase after phase to gain ground almost at will as South had no answer. South had the ascendancy at scrum time, but the lineout was a lottery, so why did we kick for touch and the resultant line out when a kick for goal or a scrum would have been the better option?
Nuneaton responded with two more converted tries and a penalty to seal the game and negate South’s scrummage power by going to uncontested scrums in the latter stages.
South tried manfully to get back into the game by throwing the ball around as Chris Bale, Simon Johnson, Harry Owens, Dave Weston and Stu Bale made inroads into the Nuns defence. The conditions, however, made it difficult to add any continuity and errors were made. Nuneaton did lose a man to the sinbin late on, but by then it was too late for South to capitalise on the mis-match in numbers.

With this defeat South are in uncharted territory as losing four out of the first six fixtures in N3M (and Midlands 1 as it was) really is unprecedented. The coaching staff have to rectify the situation during training this week and in the very near future or this could be a more than testing and very disappointing season for both players and the South faithful alike.

Squad:

Graney, Robinson, Owens H, Falle, Weston, Lord, Aley, Bale C, Johnson, McLaurin, Brundle, Ward, Stone, Coltman ©, McNaughton, Hopkins, Bale S, Langan.

Could be an interesting trip to league leaders Old Halesonians next week – hopefully the weather will be better!.