Experimental Hornets Given Food For Thought

After the euphoric opening game against Broadstreet last week, Hornets were brought down to earth with the most bone shaking thud by National 2 North side Sheffield at Leicester Road on Saturday. Hornets conceded ten tries in all while scoring just three themselves and, in the middle stages of the game, conceding 54 points to the visitors without reply. They say that you learn more in defeat than you do in victory and it was pretty apparent that there was much to learn from Saturday’s outing that must be digested very quickly if the dream of a promotion challenge is to be realised. The team that Hornets fielded on Saturday will simply not live with the likes of Clifton, Dings and Redruth without some major surgery.
To be fair, whereas Hornets had prepared for the game knowing they would be without a number of key players they were further disrupted the day before the match by the loss of Rory Vowles, Andy Weaver, and Callum Dacey (all of whom would be likely starters in any league game) to which was added the untimely withdrawal of captain Alex Salt due to injury just ten minutes into the game. Nevertheless, the performance from many of those who did start fell well short of that expected. Fitness seemed an issue for some, while others who had shone in the performance last week struggled to make an impression against much stronger opposition. DOR Chris Campbell will, however, be much clearer on his likely starting line-up after this game than he was after the Broadstreet game.
It had started well for Hornets on what was a beautiful summer’s afternoon as they stormed into a 12-0 lead with less than fifteen minutes on the clock. A well-executed catch and drive from 15m out saw Oscar Harper dot down for the try with deceptive ease, and a few minutes later Joe Wilson was able to burst through for a try after some delightful handling had taken the Hornets from their own half to the Sheffield line. Jamie Dutton notched the extras after Wilson’s try.
At that point, the home support were purring in anticipation of another exhibition reminiscent of last week but that sentiment proved ludicrously optimistic as the departure of Alex Salt triggered a horrendous collapse by Hornets either side of half-time which saw them leaking a half-century of points to a Sheffield team whose early nervous demeanour changed to one of buoyant confidence as the game progressed. The fact Salt’s departure was the critical turning point in the game points to a lack of on-field leadership which is becoming a major concern as the aging warrior enters what is likely to be the twilight of his career.
There was little to be positive about after that. The line-out badly misfired, the scrum was less than dominant, and defensive weaknesses were badly exposed by a strong running Sheffield side. With few exceptions (Nigel Mukarati being the primary one), tackling appeared optional in many instances.
It was not until deep into the final quarter that Hornets managed to finally respond on the scoreboard from a quickly taken tap penalty just 5m from the Sheffield line but even then there was still time for Sheffield to add two more tries of their own. It was a very bad day at the office all round!
Post match, DOR Chris Campbell was philosophical in his analysis. ‘It was a very interesting afternoon. It was never designed to be a game where we experimented as much as we did, but with us losing Vowles, Dacey and Weaver in the build-up and then Alex Salt after 10 minutes meant that's what it became.’

‘Looking for the positives, I thought Nigel Mukarati was outstanding, while Tom Robinson showed himself to be an effective performer. Ed Drake-Lee also showed some exciting touches in attack in his first game for us.’

‘That said, the lineout clearly didn’t function and one thing we have learnt is that we have to find different ways for that to operate when we are down so many jumpers, especially when up against a side with as much height as Sheffield had. Line-out errors directly contributed to some of the Sheffield scores.’

‘The biggest area of concern though was our wide defence and there are some players who significantly underperformed in this area. A number of the tries conceded simply came through poor defensive decisions.’

‘Looking to the forthcoming game again Leicester Lions this week (our last warm-up opportunity before the season starts proper), we already know we will not be able to field anything like a full side but we will consider selection for that very carefully. Having spoken to Lions, they are in a very similar position building up to their first league game so it should prove a much tighter contest than this game.’

Here's hoping that will prove to be the case.

Nick Robinson