By John Wilkinson IT was job done for Coventry, but director of rugby Rowland Winter conceded that the National League One leaders played some way below their own high standards in the 38-14 home win over Caldy which puts them ten points clear at the top of the table.
After conceding an early try, Cov came back to lead 28-7 at the break but were unable to kick on in the second half before finishing strongly with two late tries.
“We targeted five league points, which we have achieved, but our overall performance was below par and not at our normal high standards,” said Winter.
“We didn’t get into our normal flow, partly down to a higher amount of unforced errors which created a stop-start game, and we lacked our normal accuracy and patience in both attack and defence which will be an area to focus on as we build up to Old Elthamians next week.
“There were short periods where we put some good phases together and created pressure on Caldy, which resulted in a few exceptional tries, and some really strong defensive sets.
“But, no disrespect to Caldy, we didn’t really get out of second or third gear all day and we made life difficult for ourselves.
“If we’d kept things simple rather than getting too complicated we probably could have moved forward a lot quicker. We weren’t up to our normal standards at the set piece, we didn’t really string too many phases together and we lost the ball in contact a number of times.”
Added Winter: “We had new combinations in midfield and at half-back and I think that showed a little bit along with Tony Fenner, Rob Knox and Max Trimble all still making their way back from injury and perhaps a little bit rusty.
“But we had some really good moments and although our overall game wasn’t up to the level of performance we expect, we still got six tries and five points, and I’m happy with that.
”We’ve still got 20 games to go, we’ll continue to take it a step at a time and not get carried away. This was one of those games we’ll draw a line under and move on to next week and a fresh challenge.”
