COVENTRY’s director of rugby Rowland Winter admits his Coventry side were beaten by the better team on Saturday after falling to a 42-5 defeat away at Blackheath in National League One.
The visitors were very much in the match trailing 15-5 at half-time with Darrell Dyer crossing although the conversion attempt into the breeze was missed by Will Maisey.
But it proved to be a second half to forget for Coventry as they conceded four further tries as Winter’s side fell to their second defeat of the new 2016 season.
“All credit to Blackheath – we’ve been outthought and outworked for definitely the second half and for large periods of the first half as well, and we had no response,” said Winter.
“We went in at half-time thinking that although we were ten points behind, we’d given them a lot of field positions, given away silly penalties, and it was retrievable at that point.
“But in the second half we struggled to get any clean ball and when we did, we didn’t make the right decisions and Blackheath took every opportunity they had. They worked incredibly hard, which is something we didn’t necessarily do.
“We made poor decisions, there were times when we should have capitalised using some simple play, but we made it too complicated for ourselves.”
Coventry will be looking to bounce back straight away this Saturday when they host Hartpury College at the Butts Park Arena and Rowland is demanding to see response from his side.
He added: “There’s a lot of things that have to be addressed ahead of taking on the league leaders at home on Saturday.
“I don’t think learning curves exist, it’s a cheap excuse when things go wrong. At the end of the day we weren’t good enough, and we need to look at that and improve drastically.
“We’ve got some very talented players and if they work hard and keep things simple, then we can get results.
“We’re four games into the season, we’ve performed well at home against two teams I’d expect to struggle a little bit over the course of the season, and come away to two tough places and haven’t performed.
“If we come away and perform, work hard, and still lose, then we’ll get on the bus as content as we can be, but we certainly haven’t done ourselves proud.
“It will be a tough test, but we looked for a big response after the Moseley game and got it last week, and we need a bigger one than that this time, not just on the pitch.”
