Season 21 v Ivory Coast and Uruguay

We start season 21 with home games against Ivory Coast and Uruguay, and as you can see from the stats page there is not much to choose between all the sides in ee.2 this season, so it will all come down to tactics.

Our default tactics to start the season, which will be used in these games, will be using a drift defence, reasonably high kicking and expansive based attack, as well as Btb discipline in our half in order to try and take advantage of our height and bad discipline as well as the quality of our wingers.

We will play 1sts on normal v Ivory Coast and 2nds on TNT against Uruguay. So without further ado let me introduce our current first xv and the starting lineup against Ivory Coast:

1. Du Randt
2. Mhofu
3. M.Kwati
4. Faredo
5. Gutsa
6. Chiyangwa
7. Makonese
8. Hariro
9. Smit
10. Jongwe
11. Gwisai
12. Webster
13. Dobel
14. George
15. Zengeza

Thoughts or comments?

muzza wrote:

quality of our wingers.

Pardon me if I've missed it before, but what are our wingers like?

They're already into the 13/14's in speed and agility, and are better than our centres in skills and csr

So the first game saw a loss 17-23 to Ivory Coast! As expected we hammered them in the line out. However our bad discipline meant that our turnover to penalty ratio was really bad, so I will lower the aggression in the opponents 22 as well to try and compensate.

We also conceded far too many line breaks, which cost us in points and didn't score enough ourselves. I'm therefore thinking of changing our default defence type to rush and probably reducing the expansive in the final quarter as we don't really need the line outs there as much!

Ya Wexford reckons j has tweaked the engine so were all lowering aggression in Ireland setup as well. From looking at the game I agree with the changes and I'm a rush addict can't get enough of it

Having watched the match I think we should have kicked for touch a bit more rather than territory as our lineout did look strong.

We did get out muscled at the breakdown with both turnovers and pens going in their favour. I also think the fact we went by the book helped them to break our line as they had faster attacking ball. We may need trainers to focus more on technique to help out here

From experience I would usually go with rush defense and higher kicking in the 1st season as the players are generally worse so more prone to errors when trying more creative and expansive plays. This makes gaining metres more difficult.

We need to work out how to effectively manage our ill disciplined pack if we are to do well at the WC, however that being said Ivory Coast did post some of the best match stars in our div apart from Uruguay who TNT'd

Thanks for the comments guys! SH is absolutely right that we need to work out the best way of using this badly disciplined pack. Have adjusted the discipline for the Uruguay game so will see how that goes.

Uruguay were the only side from our division that didn't go with a full first set up in the opening match, I have therefore made a couple of changes to the starting lineup with Jongwe and Zengeza coming in for Tshuma and Howe.