Saturday 23 January 2010
Southern Counties South
Overlap and overcome
Frome 46 pts – Minety 0 pts
Frome showed why they are top of the league with a comprehensive 46-nil victory over Minety.
Forced to watch from the sidelines, Minety’s injured club captain Craig Smith gave his verdict on the game.
“Minety put out a full-strength side, but we were a bit lightweight up front.
“Our tackling was good, but they repeatedly created overlaps and ran in breakaway tries. We struggled in the scrums and lineouts, too, so didn’t get a lot of ball to play with. When we did get possession, Frome were excellent in defence. We put together some good periods of play but never looked like scoring.
“Frome showed why they’re top of the league. They’re well drilled, good in the tight, and brilliant at rucking. Their ball was always quick and clean, ours was slow.
“Despite the result, this was an improved performance from Minety compared with last week against Devizes. The trouble was that Frome were much better than Devizes, so we still lost. For all that, our heads never dropped once and there was much that I was encouraged by in our performance.”
Minety coach Huw Jones was similarly measured in his analysis.
“Having five weeks off hasn’t done us any favours. Even so, we started really well and our first 10 minutes were very good. After that, Frome got into their stride and were comfortably better up front. They put their phases together and didn’t allow us much ball to play with.
“Minety’s tackling was great. We only missed five or six tackles in the whole game, but Frome kept recycling ball and building phases until we ran out of defenders.
“At half-time, I advised our guys not to kick but to run everything they could, which they did quite faithfully. In the second half we ran everything, but we didn’t get anywhere. Frome were better than us, man for man, but I can’t fault Minety for effort and application. We turned over too much ball at the breakdown, but we’ll work on that.”
This Saturday, Minety will be keen to show they can do better as they play hosts to Dorchester.
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