A better performance from the Lions

Areas still to work on

A much better performance from the Lions. We had 3 clear areas we wanted to work on after a disappointing performance against Haywards Heath last week. 1: Scrum – much better body positions today from a new look back row meant that we dominated this area. Some front row players need to get hips lower though. 2: Ruck – better body positions enabled us to retain the ball for longer periods of the play. Still some examples of being slow to the breakdown though, do we need to get fitter? 3: Leadership – Finlay R is now our captain and we need voices from our 9 and 10 to direct play, there were signs of this today and Finlay did well in his first game as captain but he needs help and we are still too quiet on the pitch.

So some good progress and some excellent performances, particularly from Ollie Colombo and Finlay C who enjoyed the open play and were solid in defence. The main area to work on for next week is the need to run more directly. We only have 2 or 3 players who are willing to take the ball into contact and we need more. A few players are trying to hide on the pitch and we will try and work on their confidence so that we can have more ball carrying options. We need draw the defence in in order to find space.