Post by Jamie Crawford on Oct 12, 2015 15:35:31 GMT
This Saturday the Knights in fifth welcome tenth-placed Cornish Pirates to Castle Park. The Knights have won three and the Pirates two of their six league games played.
As is becoming the norm in recent games; the Knights have scored more points than their opposition but also conceded more. It seems that we are stronger in attack this season but our defence needs strengthening up.
The Knights are the third highest points-scorers in the Championship and the Pirates have the fourth tightest defence. They have only conceded four and six more points than Carnegie or Bristol consecutively for example.
The Knights have scored 58 more points than the Pirates yet conceded 38 more.
The Pirates have only played twice away from Penzance this season and lost both matches. Conversely the Knights have won two of their three home games played.
Pirate try-scoring has occurred equally between the Forwards and the Backs with the Back Row being dominant, followed by Centres then Wings. Add one for the Full Back and one for the Front Row to get the full complement of tries scored by position. Most tries have been scored in the last quarter, which indicates that fitness isn’t an issue or possibly weaknesses in defence have been noticed and exploited.
The defence against opposition Backs has been 25% worse than against Forwards. Their weakest areas have been by Centres, possibly by breaking the line and then by Wings, so probably out wide. Opposition Centres have scored more tries against the Pirates than any other team in the Championship and the Pirates are one of only three teams to have conceded a penalty try. Possibly our forwards could look for push-over tries that might lead to the Pirates illegally collapsing the set piece or we should look to shipping the ball out to the Centres to possibly break the defensive line and score/ pass out to the Wings. Tries have predominantly been conceded in the second and last twenties.
To summarise we need to overcome the strong Pirate defence using either Forward dominance or good Back interplay and strengthen our defence predominantly against their Back Row.
Fly Half Kieran Hallet is the Pirates sharp-shooter with the boot and Flanker Alex Cheeseman is their leading try-scorer.
Elsewhere this weekend:
Friday
Moseley (12) welcome Ealing Trailfinders (11)
Bedford Blues (6) host Rotherham Titans (4)
London Scottish (3) are at home against Nottingham (9)
Saturday
Jersey (8) fly over to London to play the Welsh (7)
Sunday
Bristol’s (2) Ashton Gate Stadium welcomes lead leaders Leeds Carnegie (1)
The weekend sees first v second, seventh v eighth and an eleventh v twelfth encounters, so there is the potential for a big shake-up in league positions. This early in the season there’s only the bottom three; Cornish Pirates, Ealing Trailfinders and Mosely that can’t overtake us in one game. The highest position that we could possibly aspire to achieve after this weekend is third. First v second and eleventh v twelfth can’t affect our league position but our result and the other three results could. However we shouldn’t concern ourselves with other results; only the next game whose outcome we can effect.
COYK
DONNY, DONNY, DONNY…
