RUGBY UNION: COVENTRY boss Rowland Winter admitted his side’s discipline must improve if his side are to challenge for promotion this season.
Despite defeating Bishops Stortford, which sent Coventry top of the National League One table – Rugby Union’s third tier – Winter saw opposition kicker George Cullen register 17 points.
The win leaves Coventry three points clear at the top of the National League One table, ahead of Plymouth, Darlington, and Blackheath.
Despite highlighting his side’s discipline, Winter was pleased to see Coventry pick up five crucial home points.
He said: “Bishop’s Stortford are a well-drilled side, they’re a good outfit and a really tight team.
“Our discipline wasn’t good enough, our set piece wobbled a little bit. But I’m pleased that we’ve come away with five points when playing badly – hopefully it’s the sign of a good side.
“Our discipline overall has been good this season, but I think today that with some of our decisions in attack and knock-ons in the tackle we didn’t seem as secure as we have been in other weeks.
“We probably didn’t adapt our game to the referee’s interpretations of the laws and our discipline allowed their kicker to take advantage and keep them in the game.
“We’ve got to do better than that.”
Injuries to scrum-half Pete White, in the first half, and later to Rob Knox contributed to the stop-start nature of the game which, overall, led to 18 minutes of added time.
“The injuries did disrupt us,” said Winter,
“But we’ve got good players on the bench who come on and make their impact on the game.
“Once we settled we started to get bits of control, but today those bits of control were no longer than in three or four-minute patches.
“Our task was five points, and we’ve got that.
“We would definitely have lost that game last year – it shows an improved side that we’ve dug out a win.
“It’s still early days. We’ve got a lot of work to do for next week and Fylde away is going to be a tough test.”
