Publications
Partners
Cape Town - Western Province coach John Dobson was left puzzled after his sides scrumming performance in Saturday's 33-15 win over Griquas at Newlands.
The result sees Province return to winning ways after a two-match losing streak, but there are still many areas where Dobson is looking for improvement ... the set piece being one of them.
“The scrum penalties are something I’m going to have a long look at and probably write an e-mail or two about,” he said.
“It’s intriguing when you’ve got two Springbok squad members who are clearly dominant in the scrums getting penalised the whole time.”
WP started the match with hooker Scarra Ntubeni and loosehead Steven Kitshoff in the front row after the pair had returned from the Springbok World Cup training squad. Wilco Louw started at tighthead.
“I thought we played some nice rugby but I got really, really frustrated. Our lineout was the poorest it’s been all year and I couldn’t explain what was going on at scrum time. That was a mystery to me and I think it didn’t help our cause,” he said.
“The other thing I was heartened by was our defence. We’ve been under pressure defensively for a while and we didn’t concede a try and even at the end when they came with absolutely everything I think we held our system, made our tackles, got some dominance and turned over some ball.
“I think if you looked at territory and possession we were way ahead. I think our breakdown was really good for the second week in a row. We let ourselves down in the lineout. I give them credit, they contested exceptionally well.”
