Upbeat Rowland Winter pleased with Coventry performance despite defeat at Plymouth Albion - The Coventry Observer

Upbeat Rowland Winter pleased with Coventry performance despite defeat at Plymouth Albion

Coventry Editorial 15th Feb, 2017 Updated: 15th Feb, 2017   0

RUGBY UNION: ROWLAND Winter remains upbeat and happy with the performance levels of his Coventry side despite watching them fall to a second consecutive defeat on the road in National League One.

Coventry went down 33-24 at Plymouth Albion, but the visitors pushed their opponents all the way and were within just one point of their opponents heading into added time.

But a late flurry of tries send Winter’s side home empty handed and Winter knows what areas need improving ahead of this Saturday’s home clash against Hull Ionians.

“We’ve questioned lots of stuff in the last couple of weeks and we’ve had games against Esher and Fylde where our guts and determination, our passion for the team, just wasn’t there,” said Winter. “But today we had that in abundance and we were scrapping for everything we got.




“The detail wasn’t in our game, and that’s something we can work on and improve, but we asked for a performance and we got that.

“It’s not about league points at this stage, it’s about coming here and putting in a performance and largely I’m happy with what they’ve done.


“That’s an improvement on the last couple of weeks across the board, the boys were fighting for everything, and I’m proud of some of what we’ve seen.”

It was Coventry who gained the opening score with Tony Fenner striking a fine 42-metre penalty after Albion were caught offside, but it was a prelude to a testing 25 minutes or so for the visitors.

Plymouth pressure by the minute and when Josh Peters was yellow carded for pulling down a maul, Albion made Coventry pay with hooker Tom Cowan-Dickie forcing his way over and full-back Matt Shepherd converted before Cowan-Dicke crossed again for 12-3.

Coventry were up against it but on 26 minutes they pulled valuable points back when Tom Howe crossed wide on the right and Fenner landed an excellent conversion.

This visitors were dealt another blow shortly before half-time as Freddie Tuilagi became the second player to receive a yellow for preventing release with Coventry back defending and Shepherd landed the resultant penalty to give the hosts a 15-10 lead at the break.

Despite being down to 14 men, Coventry made an encouraging start to the second half and they went in front for the second time in the match when Brett Daynes drover over the line and Fenner landed a fine conversion.

The lead however lased just four minutes as Shepherd slotted an easy penalty to put his side one point ahead and when Dan Pullinger forced his way over for another try, which was converted by Shepherd, Plymouth held a 25-17 lead.

Coventry responded again and were awarded a penalty after some good work from the forwards and Fenner converted to cut the deficit to just one point.

With Plymouth down to 14 men after Cowan-Dickie was yellow carded, Coventry pressed but could not at to their score. Instead Harvey Skinner crossed late on and Shepherd slotted his third penalty of the match late on to secure a 33-24 win.

Winter added: “Two yellow cards didn’t help, but I’m not sure we got the rub of the green with the amount of penalties we were creating and not getting anything our way.

“We’ll pick ourselves up and work hard to make sure we get things right at home to Hull Ionians next Saturday.”

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