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Dobson: ‘We played too much rugby’

PUBLISHED: August 16, 2015


DHL Western Province head coach John Dobson was able to breathe a sigh of relief on Saturday night after his team's 9-3 win over the Free State Cheetahs in Absa Currie Cup action at a wet and windy DHL Newlands.

The hosts trailed by 0-3 at half-time, but three second-half penalties from DHL Western Province flyhalf Demetri Catrakilis settled his team”s nerves – despite a late flurry of sorts from the visitors which nearly led to a match-winning score for them.

Dobson told the www.wprugby.com website: “I thought we dominated the match, but based on the amount of turnovers we conceded, we tried to play too much rugby in the (poor) weather conditions.

“It was disappointing, as we would obviously like to play a better style of rugby than that, but we dominated territory and possession… and (yet) we ended up being a desperate Kurt Coleman dive away from losing the game because we tried too much.”

On a disappointing note for DHL Western Province, influential skipper Juan de Jongh limped off in the 49th minute with what appeared to be a serious injury, with Dobson commenting: “Juan hurt his knee, which was obviously a blow to us. It”s not looking too flash but we will give an accurate update on Monday.”

As one would expect from a hard-fought match of this nature, Dobson found both positives and negatives in the DHL WP performance.

“The breakdown was a frustration for us,” admitted the Province boss.

“Our maul was particularly disappointing – attacking-wise and defensively – so that”s something we certainly need to work on before the Bulls game. Our actual line-out was good, but we didn”t do much from it, so we need to fix that (our maul).

“The conditions were not good, but our total dominance was pleasing. It was, however, disappointing not to score a single try and it always about grinding out casino a win against a team that was, in many ways, the underdog side looking for the shock win.”

The Cheetahs had three players yellow carded in the match, a sure sign of the home team”s dominance, but Province were not able to take full advantage of things – despite being up by two men at one stage in the second half.

“You”re not going to get around the outside in conditions like that. If you break or kick ahead, the defence can catch up too quickly, so we knew – like I said – that we had to grind things out,” said Dobson.

“Sometimes an exercise like this is good in a way. The guys will know that we cannot go to Loftus with an attitude and performance like this, so perhaps it was a good wake-up call we needed without the pain of a loss.”

DHL Western Province will take on the Vodacom Blue Bulls in Pretoria next Saturday (kick-off 19h00).