Outside Looking In

The blog could do with a feel good entry, especially as everything is now getting posted as a 'block' of text, making it more painful to read. Although hopefully this is now solved.

The story of Amsterdam is not so pretty.

In the Championship, Lux bore a hole down the middle of our team and made multiple raids to claim a two point win. We were cat in virtually every department. It was our worst defensive performance of the year by a distance. A share of the credit for that should go to our opponents but we didn't do anything to help ourselves. The misery was compounded by losing Ross to a knee injury.

In the next group game, we plugged the hole in the middle with Keary and Ger. We shot out of the blocks but then inexplicably failed to score in the second half and lost by a point, having dominated possession.

Amsterdam needed a result in the final group game and we need a morale boost. Again we grabbed a lead but failed to convert many second half chances and in the end settled for a draw.

3rd/4th was taken at a canter but that was more down to our opponents' lack of will.

Nobody should be under any illusion that what happened on Saturday is a reflection of where we are at. We have so far failed to kick on from last year and if anything, other teams have overtaken us.

There were brief highlights of hope. Of the 13 players used on Saturday, we had 8 different scorers. Three of those scores came from hook kicks, which we have spent a lot of time practicing at training. The foul count was down and the near handed tackling much improved.

The Shield had a similiar start. Lux also put them to the sword early in the day. The team betrayed the principles which we follow at training by reverting to kick passing and thus handed possession to their opponents.

Game 2 saw an adjustment to this behaviour as the lads kept possession much better. Scoring proved problematic and the game finished in a low scoring draw.

This meant that the final group game against Dusseldorf effectively became a 3rd/4th playoff. The lads still had plenty left in the tank at this stage and it showed in the second half as the team pulled away.

All that leaves us in a pretty grim situation today. However, time on this occasion is our friend and hopefully we can hit the reset button during our team meeting on Thursday night. I always bang on about how success is important to sustaining the club. The main reason for that is because when the going is tough, lads will easily find other things to distract them and the whole thing could slowly crumble. We're in a big hole now and the reaction will be key.