Superior fitness and the championship experience of the national ruggers were the ingredients that caused Barbados’ cookie to crumble in Saturday’s NACRA Senior Men’s 15-a-side Caribbean championships game at the Providence National Stadium.
So said national rugby coach Theodore Henry yesterday in the aftermath of his charges stunning 19-17 comeback victory after they were down in a nil-17 hole at halftime.
“Our superior fitness level and championship pedigree played major roles in our win Saturday,” said Henry of the Southern Caribbean champions.
“We have been to the finals twice for the past two years so the guys know what it takes to pull out a victory like that. The players know that regardless of the circumstances we have what it takes and the belief that we can be victorious so I think it was our championship experience and superior fitness that did it for us.”
So what went wrong in the first half?
“I think we strayed from the game plan a bit in the first half coupled with unforced errors that really put us on the back foot,” Henry opined. “The size advantage of the Bajans also was an issue for us like I knew it would have but I just wanted the guys to withstand that pressure that they brought in the first half, I knew they would have scored but 17-nil is not what I expected,” he added.
After sleep walking for the first 45 minutes, the team emerged with new life out of the locker room.
Said Henry:“At half time I told them that we are in a hole, but it is not a deep hole that we can’t dig ourselves out of as long as we scored first in the second half and clamp down on defence anything can happen and as luck would have it they didn’t score at all in the second half.
“We returned to the game plan, kept the ball in our hands a bit more and tried not to get into too much contact with them because we realized they were tiring, even in the latter stages of the first half they started to look exhausted so we ran the ball more open rather than playing a tight game.”
Tries by Claudius Butts, Avery Corbin (two) and two conversions by national captain, Ryan Gonsalves, completed the comeback win and kept the locals buoyant ahead of their away match against Trinidad and Tobago on June 1.
A victory over Trinidad will see Guyana retaining the South Zone title.
Before they wing out to the Twin Island Republic however, the national team must work assiduously to correct the almost costly mistakes made against the Bajans.
“We most definitely have to clean up all those unforced errors before we go to Trinidad because we don’t want to be playing on their home turf from behind” the national rugby coach declared.
“I think once we withstand the first burst of pressure we will be good but definitely we cannot allow Trinidad to put 17-nil on us we have to start on a positive”.
“We dropped too many balls at the three-quarter line and the scrum, we really need to revisit our technique, our scrum I think was a bit too high and that caused us to be pushed around by the Bajans and we gave away too many penalties”
I will view the tape and address these factors” Henry assured.
Newly elected president of the Guyana Rugby Football Union (GRFU), Peter Green who was watching from stands congratulated the ruggers and urged them to continue to make the nation proud.
