TACKLING - Is it me of do our guys seem to tackle with one arm, we consistently get brushed aside and when we do manage to hang on the opposition player 99/100 still manages to get their arms free to get a handball away. In the reverse situation we seem to try the "Tuck handball" method of throwing the ball back over our head, generally to an opposition player and if not then pinged by the umpire for throwing the ball anyway. Are not the fundamentals of tacking to bring the player you are tacking into a position of no return i.e. disable their ability to promote the ball which in turn may lead to a turnover or a free kick or at worst provide an opportunity to gain possession back for the team. We desperately need to address this issue, time after time Carlscum players broke lose from our poor attempts at tackles, we are just going to get pulverised every game if we dont improve this very lame aspect of our game.
TURNOVERS - Can the RFC ensure all players are tested for colour blindness. It seems they cannot differentiate between black and yellow and all other colours. What do these guys do at training, do they actually practice kicking to a target? Do we have kicking coaches who detect deficiencies and actually try to fix them? It doesnt seem that way, with the zonal possession game of today a team who cannot find a target across 20 metres is going to get slaughtered, as was the case last night. The thing that worries me is that these players are professionals, they live the game 24/7, if they cant get the fundamentals right then they are not suited to todays game, get rid of them and bring in players that can. Alternatively we need to intensively work to correct these deficiencies, the sad thing is that we seem to have a large section of the squad that has such deficiencies, how did we recruit such players in the first place? The other issue is that these skill errors spread like Cancer through the team, Lids who you would normally expect to hit a target could hit two from 20 metres, Browny missing the same targets in the middle of the ground. These players are supposedly our best but failed under pressure, why does this happen and what are we doing to ensure it doesnt happen regularly.
The simple fact is this, the game plan used by most of the top sides is well beyond our skill capability, that's why we will always be well behind the other clubs and finals football is such a struggle, unfortunately 9th position is a pretty good indicator of where we have been and where we are now skill wise, i dont see this improving in the short term.
