Titans Chat

Plymouth look like they have 4 away games to go (Dings, Birm, Us, Sale). We have Park, Judds, Club, Sedge. So the Away at Club and Park and the home matches vs Plym and Sale are the big ticket matches for us. When you list it out, its such a tough league and the other matches will be also tough. There is no let-up. We have to be on the money all the way to the end. I suspect Plymouth will be on their game all the way and their big matches will be against us and Sale.

I think that the squad rotation of other teams is also a factor, you look at Leeds, Dings, Clifton and Judds; all have access to higher divison (incl premiership academy) players. We did seem however, to fair less well against these teams (in particular Leeds) and some fatigue may have set in with our consistency. Difficult to tell. A lot of the matches with big scorelines were close for a full half or even 60 mins and then the more clinical teams have piled on the points at the end. I definitely felt that we lost some steam at the backend of the first half of the season but also seemed to lose a bit of faith in the backs and reverted to a more kicking orientated stategy as well. We have 2 from 2 on our inbound journey and a solid 10 points in the bag, so hopefully we are recharged, becuase we will need to be!!

Did someone mention that we needed to improve our points difference 

T'was me 

It was very much needed when you look at the points differences per game over the season so far.

What might the reasons be?

Have we tired?
Have teams worked us out?
Have other teams strengthened?
A mix of everything?

We haven't really been hit by injuries so have been able to put out a relatively stable squad every week, so can't blame it on injuries.

Whatever it might be, I hope the lads keep battling for the rest of the season, they are clearly good enough to push for promotion.

You can see thye have had a topsy turvey season, will be intetresting to see how it pans out.

 I wasn't able to see the Leeds match and I haven't seen any footage, but I was a t Plymouth when we narrowly lost despite being, in my opionion, the better team. I thought we looked effective and dangerous with ball in hand and when we kicked it and the kick was contestable, then we also did ok. The truth is we didn't go through the phases enough in the backs and opted to box kick an awful lot. On that day, the kicking was a little off and in the end played into Plymouth's hands. Drop kicking, for me, is a great weapon when you are going through the phases and getting nowhere. I think this just doesn't happen much with many teams, when close enough to realistically go for the drop goal. Rotherham either make the yards anyway or go for the contestable kick or go for touch. It's just theory but I don't really recall any opportunity against Plymouth to execute a drop goal. The referee also seemd to ignore Rotherham marching Plymouth's scrum 5 yards up the pitch and we, in my opinion (and as a qualified ref) were denied a few kickable penalties. Dings (or Bristol acadamey) was just a freak day I think. The rest we won. I think the DG should definitely be a card up the sleeve though, if we find ourselves in a tight spot (I think Sale, Blackheath, Park and of course Plymouth are most likely to generate this).