When CR ran onto the field at Galle Face on Friday evening it was a welcome sight to see and hear all of the CR supporters who turned out in numbers to support the team. From the noise I expect half of the crowd, which I hear was around 2500-3000 people, were there to support the “Red Shirts”. The team are very happy to have won both of the early away games and playing Police at home this Sunday will be welcomed. The Army match was a big game for us and the players responded accordingly playing good rugby in the first half.

Police will present their own set of problems for us this weekend and as with the previous 2 away games we are treating them with respect and will need to be focused again for another tough match. They have a good lineout jumper who is very tall and very good in the air to add to this they have 2 Sri Lanka reps in the midfield that are quick and agile and will test our defensive integrity. Many of the supporters will have noticed that the team was changed last week to enable us to put our most suitable side on the field for the Army clash which meant this meant we had some of the young guns playing in the B side v Army. This week will be approached in the same manner and selections will hinge on which players will be best suited for the Police match.

The game v Army was a good evaluation tool for us early in the season and exposed a few concerns. Some of these are our penalty count at the breakdown, mainly for offside and playing the ball in the ruck either hands on the ball after the ruck is formed or playing the ball while still on the ground. These infringements cost the team considerable field position and added pressure on our defence. Again our ball control in contact and ball handling let us down at crucial times and resulted in 3-4 squandered opportunities.

Our defence once again was quite good but as in any game there needs to be some fine tuning especially our communication at the fringes of the breakdown. Too many times players were not calling “onside” and getting back behind the last feet which resulted in penalties and a couple of players were beaten on there inside shoulders and this resulted in clean line breaks for the opposition. It was a shame the team let in the late try which meant our line was breached for the first time this season but after 4 penalties in your own half that could be expected.

This week against Police we will be looking to play away from their forwards as we did against Army and make their heavy forwards work to get to the breakdown. Police had the bye last weekend so they will be fresh but we will be better off following a fast and tough game against the Soldiers and the increased match fitness. We will also be concentrating on reducing the penalty count against us, which will mean a more attractive game for the spectators and more field position for CR. The team will be looking to unleash some creative phase play attack v Police and I am looking forward to watching the boys play. We also look forward to the continued support from the diehard members and invite everyone to watch our final training session “Captains Run” at 6pm on Friday night.