ALEX: “WE NEED TO BE BETTER”
Alex Sanderson said his team will work hard to improve after slipping to defeat on the opening weekend of the new Gallagher PREM season. Two tries apiece from Harry Randall and Louis Rees-Zammit saw Bristol Bears to a rare win in Manchester.
“Not the result we wanted or the start that we wanted,” Alex said. “At times, for both myself and the players, it was wildly frustrating due to the inacuracies with the ball, particularly on our exits, and our inability to get out of our own half.
“We feel like we gave them too many opportunities to launch and to score.
“It was maybe down to a bit of cohesion and looking back, in hindsight, would it have been better to organise a game for last week rather than try and keep them fresh? It certainly wasn’t what we’ve been producing week in week out in pre-season.
“But it’s all stuff that we’re confident we can iron out and I know we have the squad, the group, the talent and the experience to find form and kick on. It just wasn’t today.”
Alex has made no secret of his desire to see his team play in a more expansive fashion this season and in spells, they certainly did that. But the Sharks DoR says there’s more to come.
“A lot of our points came from phase play and you could see our intent to run,” he said. “Physically, on the gain line we looked strong, as we did in the set-piece so that was encouraging. But you have to marry that up with doing the basics well, which was what we said at half-time.
“We felt like the better team but the basics let us down. We need to be better and we need to improve individually and collectively. The positive thing is that there is so much room to improve next week, and we will do that.
“We’ll come back in on Tuesday and we’ll set our task to going after Sarries.”
Alex confirmed that Rekeiti Ma’asi-White will have a scan on an ankle injury that forced him off in the first half.
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