Force fears a losing culture

[travelling_gerry]

Wayne Smith From: The Australian April 04, 2011 12:00AM



WESTERN Force coach Richard Graham is starting to wonder whether the habit of losing gallantly has become too ingrained at the Perth club.

It's a question worth asking in a season in which the Force already has lost twice by a single point and was forced to settle for a draw against the Blues after conceding an avoidable ruck penalty with only seven seconds remaining.

And it was particularly pertinent after Graham's side squandered a 12-point lead at the end of the first quarter to go down 26-25 to the Melbourne Rebels in Perth on Saturday night.

"Historically, the Force has had a lot of close, hard-fought losses and you do wonder if over a period of time they start to become acceptable," Graham said.

Unfortunately, as Queensland discovered during their long years in the wilderness, there is a Catch-22 element to winning -- the only way of learning how to do it is to actually win.

"We still haven't learned how to do that," he admitted ruefully. "At some stage we've got to go from being the team that works hard and is everyone's second-favourite team to being the side that knows how to win."

While Graham may be justified in berating his players for not respecting the Rebels' ability to fight back from 12-0 and 15-3 deficits, especially since they had come back from 0-17 against the Hurricanes the week before to win 42-25, the match did turn on two freakish pieces of play from the Rebels.

The first was the stunning intercept try by Melbourne second-rower Hugh Pyle who swooped into the thick of a Force attack to snaffle a long cut-out pass from Force fullback Cameron Shepherd.

The second was an even more audacious play, with Rebels five-eighth Danny Cipriani seemingly setting himself to take a shot at penalty goal from almost point blank range before suddenly crosskicking to an unmarked Richard Kingi to score wide out, resurrecting the ploy first used in the Test arena by Paul McLean and Brendan Moon against Scotland in 1981.

Adding injury to insult was the loss of openside flanker Matt Hodgson with a damaged AC joint. Graham estimated his industrious ball-scavenger could be out for up to six weeks.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1226032920722

[TOCC]

i don't think its a losing culture so much as it is a lack of experience and depth on the bench, Super Rugby has turned into a 22 man game, the top teams are bringing there bench players on with 30-40min to go.

[Ecky]

Wayne Smith From: The Australian April 04, 2011 12:00AM........
And it was particularly pertinent after Graham's side squandered a 12-point lead at the end of the first quarter to go down 26-25 to the Melbourne Rebels in Perth on Saturday night.......

They had quarters? I didn't go to the game, and am damn glad I didn't if they played quarters

[Sheikh]

They had quarters? I didn't go to the game, and am damn glad I didn't if they played quarters

They didn't blow up for quarters, but we seemed to play them. 1st quarter we were brilliant and the Rebels hardly touched the ball. 2nd it was the other way round. 3rd was pretty even and 4th was like the 2nd.