Lads,
First thanks to the 22 guys who came last Sunday, with some of the best condition we could expect for rugby (great ground, great weather..). Warm welcome to Hamza and Tanaka-san who officially join the all france for this season.
First Game vs Honda Giken: Lost 0 – 3 Tries We knew there are big, but somehow we were still surprise to have some much pressure on the forwards.They turned over many rucks because we were late or not enough people on the support : => We must be faster on the support. => We have to adapt the number of guys coming to support on the opponent pressure. Their number 20 was very powerful and made a lot of damage => When there is a very strong player, we have to go 2 on him However, we manage to resist well in scrums and line out were good.With a better physical commitment, we could have been competitive.
Second Game vs Ginza TJ : Draw 2 – 2 Tries Ginza’s played much more like a typical Japanese team, with less contest and more open play. Our scrum was dominating but we could have use it more => When the scrum is dominating, we have to keep the ball in longer to take advantage of it. Our attack line was very good to keep the ball alive, with some action with more than 10 phases. That was very great and fun to play. I guess we were missing a bit of speed, and the attack line should be a bit deeper. After many players changes, our line out get messy and we lost many of them. => When it get messy, we have to throw the line out to the experienced jumper. At last, I was really impress by the last action of the game, were we managed to recover from a stupid try by committing most of the team in a nice, smooth, long phase!
Overall I think we have a great team. We need know to get more physical engagement (it’s not muscle, it s in the head),be more careful of the rules on the rucks (the ref. was quite nice to us) and we will do good.
I had a lot o fun playing last Sunday, I m looking forward next week for the beginning of the Shuto League!
Laurent All France Rugby Club