Voorts View - Below-par show at Ionians down to tackling (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Voorts View - Below-par show at Ionians down to tackling

10:42am Thursday 10th March 2011 in Sport

KENDAL RUFC player/coach Ian Voortman offers his weekly view: I cannot begin to explain why we played so poorly away at Hull Ionians.

A good week’s training and decent build-up had me feeling confident of an away win, but as soon as the whistle blew it was clear that we were well below par.

At only 10-6 down come half time with the wind at our backs for the second half, we had every reason to feel confident, but between minutes 40 and 80 we came up with every conceivable error in the book and made an ordinary Ionians team look like a side that should be plying their trade in the Premiership.

We need to have a look at our tackling technique at training this week to prevent a repeat of Saturday’s defensive performance.

Bouncing and dropping off one-on-one tackles is inexcusable and every one of us would have been guilty of it at some stage against Hull.

Iain Hudson has injured his leg and I will be extremely surprised if he recovers in time for the Grasshoppers game.

He will now have to squeeze his substantial frame into an already full treatment room.

The non-stop nature of the league means that all the teams will have injury problems at some stage. Up till now our medical team have done a fantastic job in getting the walking wounded back on the field.

Preston Grasshoppers are next up in the first of two consecutive home games.

We have a squad full of players busting a gut to win and put last weekend’s nightmare to bed.