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Saints boss Dowson reacts to controversial Care incident
By PA
Northampton director of rugby Phil Dowson admitted his frustration at his side’s failure to capitalise on three Harlequins yellow cards as they fell to a 41-32 defeat at Twickenham.
Danny Care, Louis Lynagh and Tyrone Green were all sent to the sin-bin, with Care fortunate to escape a red card, having already seen yellow when he appeared to come off his feet at the breakdown to kill the ball. Referee Karl Dickson opted to award only a penalty.
Luke Northmore and Will Porter both scored two tries and Stephan Lewies and Caden Murley also crossed as Quins claimed victory in the Big Summer Kick-Off.
Northampton’s tries came through Ollie Sleightholme, James Ramm, Tom Litchfield and Courtney Lawes, whose score salvaged a bonus point.
Dowson said: “Clearly I would have liked to have conceded fewer points. That’s frustrating and disappointing.
“I said before the game about how dangerous Quins are and we didn’t manage to contain them.”
On the Care incident, he said: “There was a lot going on in that break of play. Karl and the TMO have had a good look at (it) and they’ve deemed that Care pushing James Ramm and diving on the ball wasn’t a yellow-card offence.
“They had a lot of yellow cards and we didn’t capitalise and that was fundamentally the difference. When we did get opportunities, there’s three or four times we’re on their line and we either dropped the ball or didn’t convert.
“So we left points out there, we didn’t convert chances, particularly in the first half, and when they had chances, they were very, very clinical. There will be a lot to take from it.”
Danny Wilson was pleased to see his Quins side come out and attack.
He said: “We’re going to come out and entertain and we know in this competition and others bonus points are important. We’ve got to score four tries week in, week out, and that’s exactly what we’re trying to do.
“It’s their DNA, it’s the club’s DNA, it’s what it’s been built on and long may it continue.
“It’s so tight it’s mad. Every game feels like knockout rugby, so you’ve got to go and score four tries and get bonus points to give yourselves a chance.
“We’ve done what we needed to do in front of a big crowd here, which is an amazing experience.”
He added: “We said at half-time we should be further ahead on the scoreboard if it wasn’t for the yellow cards, which is what gave them a foot up in the game.
“They were all one-off yellow cards that we shouldn’t be giving away.
“We had some really good defensive sets in our own 22, our collisions were way better than what they’ve been.
“We probably got a bit soft a couple of times on edges and, if you give Northampton an edge, they’re going to score from that.”
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Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
Go to commentsYou always get idiots who go overboard. What else is new? I ignore them. Why bother?
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