RUGBY UNION
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ROBB College mightn’t have got the result they were after but Saturdays 24-5 loss to Armidale was a promising starting point for the students as they look to go one better than last year.
They were right in it and had the Blues under pressure for periods of the game.
“It was good for a first hit-out,” co-coach Sam Ditchfield said.
“We hadn’t really played any trial games.”
“I thought we started well.
“(But) We didn’t convert pressure into points.”
They spent a fair portion of the first half in their half but had little to show for it.
The forwards provided some good go-forward but the Blues were right on them when they tried to go wide and closed them down pretty well.
They did have a couple opportunities for points through penalties from about 40 but opted to go for the line.
Both times Armidale snuffed them out.
When they did finally have a shot it was off target and they found themselves behind not long after with Armidale landing a penalty.
Robb finally got some reward finding a bit of room on the outside but conceded a try right on half-time to trail at the break.
They fell further behind early in the second half.
“Their kick-off to the second half was a very good kick-off,” Ditchfield said.
“I still don’t know what went wrong there but something did go wrong.” He thought they had enough penalties to apply some pressure but, for the most part, they struggled to sustain pressure.
“The Blues are very well-drilled in stealing the ball,” he said. “Their defence was very good, they have very strong defensive technique.
“They were ripping the ball off players as they went to ground.”
He felt individually they played well and matched the Blues in a lot of areas. Some they were probably dominant in.
“We thought we were dominant in the scrum,” Ditchfield said.
The rolling maul was also very effective.
Ditchfield thought their defence was generally good too and they did a pretty good job of controlling Mike TeMoana until the end when he set up the Blues third try with a damaging run.
Try scorer Joe Evans and number eight Tom Kent both had big games and were adjudged Robbs best.
Captain Will Archer picked up the two points and Callum Kyle the one.