It’s taken me a while to get over the game, largely down to the very basic errors, dare I say school boy errors.
To let a kick off bounce once is worrying but three times, a disgrace. Raised some doubts in my mind about Hooley’s ability all round.
Incorrect play-the-balls are again something you should never do at the top level but when you’re within 10m of their goal line, what on earth.
And as others have said, we let Sneyd run the game. Line speed was slow throughout but no one, and I mean no one pressured his kicks. In contrast, all our halves were targeted, sometimes a little too closely but it puts the doubt in their minds.
As an aside, the ref made a few calls, both for and against, that simply puzzled me but I think the game as a whole needs to look at options when teams are deliberately taking time out of the game, especially when using foul play. In that last 5 mins we were given penalty after penalty, six again’s and so on but it makes no difference if you need more than 2 points. It just eats up the one thing you do need - time. Absolute gamemanship straight from the Paul Rowley coaching manual.
Perhaps the ref can say enough is enough, we’re playing another 5 minutes…just a thought.
