Simon reflects on busy week

Bridgwater head coach Simon Morrell can’t wait for Saturday’s game at Thornbury to come around, after a week when in common with many his side were without a fixture.
After six matches in South West One (West) Bridgwater and Albion find themselves five from the bottom of the table, and last week they were beaten 13-8 at home by Teignmouth who Morrell previously coached.
The head coach pulled no punches after last week’s game, but he believes that there can be positive outcomes from this reverse.
Talking after his two sessions with the Bridgy boys the head coach said: “It’s always good to report back to training following a frustrating performance and result. If handled well, you can get a real sense of purpose out of the group. And that is how this week panned out. Credit to the boys, I love their ‘multiplier’ attitude at training.
“The week inevitably started with a productive review. Not necessarily of the performance from the previous Saturday; but more a holistic view of where the group are.
“The honest view from my position is, our system/patterns are all very well drilled into the group, but they weren’t last week. Our approach to the middle third was awful, but that was well and truly ironed out this week.
“That said the systems we have ion place are worthless without 100% buy in for 80 minutes of the game. We have seen some really encouraging performances from the group in fits and starts, most notably in the first 20 minutes last week. This suggests an element of ‘switching off’ and reverting to ‘type’ is creeping in.”
The head coach went on: “A good example is our defence last week, which was absolutely heroic at times, marching Teignmouth back 20 yards and dominating the gain line- suffocation for want of a better word.
“But ten we let in two of the softest tries all season, as two or three boys ‘switched off ‘, breaking every rule in the book in the process.
“This is just one of many examples to come out of this week’s meeting. The onus now will shift away from patterns and units and centre on the Individual.
“The boys will now take real responsibility for their own performances; video analysis and statistics will help players and coaches to review contributions.

What we hope to gain from this is a real raise in personal standards.
“Practically put, we will now be asking every player to sustain that first tackle mentality up until the final whistle, to manage their emotions and to buy into those undesirable messy parts of the game where ability is not a factor, it’s simply a case of wanting to do your bit for the team.
“What we are talking about is a huge cultural change in the squad, and one that will see us control our own performances and results.
As ever in spite of my own frustrations with the result and performance against Teignmouth, the opportunity to improve has not been wasted. It really is up to the players now to add those details to their individual contributions which will soon see us up and running.”
Simon added: “Nothing is handed to you at this level- so roll on Thornbury this weekend!”

Category: 1st XV News, Previews / Reports -XV