Wednesday 9 March 2016

Sunday's Coming: Coventry Bears

While Hornets were busy seeing off Hunslet last weekend,  Poor Coventry Bears were getting handed their arse in Toulouse courtesy of the sort of defending that will have had coach Tom Tsang waking up in a cold sweat.

Having given a decent account of themselves in the recent pre-season game at Spotland - and having nailed 28 points on League 1 pretenders Keighley in a Challenge Cup defeat at Cougar Park (final score 54-28) - the trip across the channel revealed Coventry’s issues defending high-tempo, direct football - check-out the video below.



Before the game in Toulouse, Tsang said: “I am confident we can score a lot of points against any side in the League, we just need to up our efforts and smarts in defence…” Having shipped 4 tries in a whirlwind first quarter, the Bears found themselves 36-6 down at the break.

Tsang said afterwards: “(we) didn’t do ourselves justice. We were too weak in the first half and allowed them too much time… the second half was better.” Only if you view conceding three more tries and being nilled as an improvement. Still, it’s a long way to September…


Dale Fail:  We put League Weekly right
Closer to home it’s been a misnomered week for Hornets in the ‘League Weekly’ - who referred to us in headlines as ‘Dale’ twice in Monday’s issue. We suspected a sub-editor that knows nowt about Rugby League.

So we dropped them the following note:

“Dear League Weekly,  Just a quick note in relation to your two mentions of Rochdale Hornets in the Monday 7th March issue. In two headlines (‘Dale honour for Myler’ and ‘Philbin shines for impressive Dale’), you refer to us as ‘Dale’ which - as any Northern sports fan will tell you - is the long-established nickname of our groundshare partners Rochdale AFC.”

“Having watched Hornets for over 40 years, I’ve never in that time heard anyone within Rugby League refer to us as ‘Dale’.  Having one of the game’s most recogniseable suffixes, it seems a shame not to use it. “

To their credit, League Weekly did respond - and, it seems, we were right: “Yes, I'm afraid we have a new sub-editor who is clearly unaware of this fact. I suspect Hornets was too long a word... but he will be told!”

Glad to have cleared that up.

And so - in a week that saw huge swaths of the Midlands disappear under rising floodwater - we gird up our loins for the trip down the M6. Games like this will form the backbone of our season, so let’s get down there and cheer the boys home. For your satnav, the postcode for the Butts Park Arena is CV1 3GE. See you there.