A well drilled West London side blew away the Tigers on Saturday to run out comprehensive 42 nil winners despite the Tigers holding the Sharks to just 12 nil at half time.
West London's performance proved the gap between the Tigers and the top teams at this level as their pace and power was well utilised with excellent organisation, team work and well structured plays.
For the Tigers, Sam Richbell and Gary Flook worked hard all afternoon in the hot conditions whilst Phil Reed, Dan Sharpe, Mark Marwood and Rich Sinclair tried to create opportunities in attack to lift the side but at the end of the day the Tigers had no answer to the West London side.
The half time scoreline was misleading however given the Sharks could ahve had another 4 tries on the board but a combination of scrambling defence from the Tigers and poor finishing from West London kept the Tigers in the game.
Astonishingly also was the half time scoreline given the Tigers only ventured in the West London half with the ball in hand twice in the whole first half. In fact the Tigers completion rate told the story of the game with Tigers only completing 1 set of 6 tackles out of 14 sets in the first half. Any side with such a low completion rate, high rate of unforced and forced errors is always gloing to struggle at this level and the completion barely improved in the second half with only 3 sets out of 11 sets being completed.
The Tigers therefore forced themselves to defend, defend and defend all day and given injuries, the hot conditions and the fact the Tigers players have shown no commitment to training this season, that the defensive line would eventually fall apart and the Sharks ran in several excellent tries.
And when in attack, the Tigers lacked any spark, organisation or ability to constructively break the defensive line as would be expected of any side who doesn't train and prepare. It was only the brute force of front rowers Jamie Goss and Richbell that created any opportunities for the Tigers.
But midway through the second half, with the game lost and the Tigers tryin to play catch up, as to be expected more errors occured in attack as the Tigers pushed the pass, and this would have contributed to the poor set completion rate.
Coach Chris Potts -
'this was a very disappointing result for the boys who put in 100% on the field... but if you don't put in 100% off the field at training etc, then you just can't expect to compete at this level'.
'It's been a very frustrating season but at the end of the day we are all amateurs, competing a the highest level this club has ever played at and most of our 1st grade players are now entering into their 4th season of back to back union and league and coming to their end of the players lifecycle... given all the players at the Tigers are union first and league second, I feel we've extracted all we can out of the current players and their is nothing left to extract now, some players are tired, others complacent... the bottom line is we are not all singing off the same hymn sheet, but this is to be expected at this level'.
I thank all the players for their committments over the past 4 seasons. We've had some tremendous results, 2 Eastern Region championships, a National Final, a LARL grand final, Midlands Premier Semi Final but its time now to move on, rebuild and many established players are looking to retire and move on after this season. This is what happens in sport at this level. What we need now however is leadership and vision within the club, we clean out the locker room, bring in some new blood and move forwards from a coaching perspective, and from a committee perspective ensuring the future of the Tigers for years to come is now priority no.1'.
Frustratingly the Bedford Tigers will never quite know how good they could truly have been with this current generation of players from 2006 to 2009, because they've never trained consistantly or regularly as a squad and never put out the same 17 for two consecutive weeks in 3 seasons now. Certainly, with greater committment this generation of players could have competed with the top sides in Southern Premier but most of them now will drift away, retire etc and the Tigers will now look to rebuild over the next 12 months and uncover the next generation of Tigers players.
This has been a long season for the Tigers in 2009 and there are a number of issues facing the club at present in relation to subs, training attendance, committment of players and so on that need to be sifted through in the off season and plans of actions need to be put in place to try and rebuild and refocus the club for future seasons to come.
Final Score - 42 nil.
Bedford - no points
Man of the Match -
3. nil
2. Sam Richbell and Phil Reed
1. Gary Flook, Jamie Goss and Euan Irwin |
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