10:36am Monday 15th March 2010
By Peter Martini
MICK RAMSDEN believed complacency caused the first-half capitulation that saw York City Knights crash to defeat at Workington.
The Knights went to Derwent Park after four straight victories but lost the Championship One encounter 32-22 – having trailed 30-0 just before half-time.
Assistant-coach Ramsden reckoned the build-up to the game had been excellent, only for his side to give a woeful first-half performance, for which a much-improved second half could not make amends.
“I looked at the players before the game and I thought we’d prepared really well,” he said.
“The trip up was good and, in the changing rooms before the game, I actually commented that it was the best changing room we’ve had this year. Everybody looked like they were on the ball and were ready. But then they went out and put on a show like that.”
He added: “I believe it was a complete mental thing (that let us down) – the way we started was as if we thought it would be much easier than it was.”
Ramsden admitted errors came with and without the ball, including conceding penalties again. They had a third man sin-binned in three games.
“There was a lot of indiscipline, messing around in the ruck area, which we didn’t need, and we just gifted the ball to them,” he said.
“One of our goals was to reduce our penalty count but pretty much after the first 20 minutes we had conceded most of the penalties we said we’d allow ourselves for the full game. It was (also) our worst half in defence of the season.”
He added: “We’ve got to learn that we can’t gift teams the ball like we did. They took their tries very well but a lot of it was down to us. When we’re on our game we should be a stronger side than Workington but they took what was on offer.”
The much better second period came after a half-time dressing down in which Ramsden admitted there was a bit of “hair-drier treatment”.
“It was a bit of both really,” said the club stalwart. “It was telling them the truth of the matter – that they looked as if they didn’t want to play, or that they had come here thinking it would be easy.
“But it’s never an easy trip. I know myself going up there is a different thing and they showed they are a tough side. They’ll probably beat a few other teams there but maybe that didn’t sink in with the lads.”
Ramsden said the Knights’ defence improved as did their use of the ball. He added: “We went into a period of completing sets, we got good shape and depth, we ran onto the ball stronger and tries came from it. We got more and more confident as the half progressed.”
That improvement saw the scores pulled back to 30-22, only for points-machine Lee Waterman to miss an easy hat-trick chance, after which his side ran a penalty rather than go for two simple points to get them to within a converted try of a draw and keep the pressure on the hosts.
Ramsden said: “What’s the point in scrimping and trying to get a draw,” he said. “We shouldn’t have been in that position anyway. I considered going for two but I thought, ‘Let’s just go for it – we had battled back, let’s go for the win’.”
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