Where oh
where do I start in this bruiser of a match? It was indeed a bruiser, as it
always is with the French. In general, we played the fourth best team in the
world close. We matched their first try with one of our own and took an early
7-5 lead. Then the French scored again, but we tied up the match 10-10. That
was the story of the first half—trading blows—and France landed the final jab
to take a 17-10 lead into halftime.
In the
second half, we let ourselves down for about 20 minutes and gave up 19 points
in that span. However, we tightened up our defense and closed the match without
conceding another point. On the offensive end, we failed to get through the
French defense in the second half. We had opportunities, but could capitalize.
Though we
lost, there is always a learning opportunity—always take-aways and areas in
which to grow. Handling errors plagued us on the attack. We dropped 7 balls, when we were within or close to the France 22. Those errors leave
points on the field. The second half lapse is something that has haunted us
over our last few matches, and we experienced that once again. And we learned
that we need to be patient in our system—that our system works, but sometimes
that takes multiple phases.
We also
took away some positives and hope to build on those. Our set pieces were good.
We won most of our lineouts and stole some of theirs, and our scrum not only
hung in with one of the best in the world, it pushed them around at times. Our
back line had moments of line-breaking brilliance. We saw space well and hit
the occasional offload.
Going
forward, these are the things we will fix and build upon. Our errors aren’t
those that are hard to sort out, and we are confident in the things we did
well. Tomorrow’s match should shape up to be a close one, and with the work we’ve
been putting in, we hope to wind up on top.
I’d also
like to give a shout-out to our three new caps—Alev Kelter (my fellow ginger),
Kate Zackary (“Sam and Kate on 3”) and Abby Gus-gus…the big 6-footer!
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