Coach believes Alexandra capable of better things
THREE years ago, Alexandra got to the top of the pile in the Central Otago club competition.
It clinched its first title since 1994 with a late converted try to beat Maniototo 2320.
Happy days.
But just two games into the campaign, this season already looks like a desperate battle.
Alexandra suffered a humbling 1077 loss to Wakatipu last weekend and coach Bevan Passmore was fairly blunt in his assessment of where it all went wrong.
‘‘We didn’t really front up ,to be honest,’’ he said.
‘‘When you don’t front up defensively, or you don’t tackle, you get shown up pretty badly.’’
It all came down to the wrong attitude, as far as Passmore was concerned.
‘‘We just didn’t have the energy or the attitude to be competitive and it got out of hand pretty quickly. We weren’t able to recover from it.’’
The team talk this week will centre around getting the ‘‘head space’’ sorted out.
‘‘We’ll have a chat about it at training and just talk about attitudes.
‘‘I don’t want to make excuses. We’ve got a young side but we’ve got a fair bit of talent in the side. We just didn’t front up in the weekend.
‘‘We had an off day and the scoreboard reflected that.’’
Alexandra lost its opening game 529 to Cromwell but was more competitive than the score suggests.
It trailed 149 after about 50 minutes but Cromwell dominated the final phase, to pull away and win by a comfortable margin.
Passmore believes Alexandra’s defensive effort in the opening half of the season is an indication the team can be more competitive if it can get its approach right and play with more desire.
It plays Matakanui in Omakau this weekend and the coach is hoping for a big improvement on that front.
‘‘It is just a matter of getting the boys back on track and putting that game behind us, as well as learning some lessons from it.
‘‘It was only the second game of the season and it is not the end of the world. I think a true reflection of a team is how you bounce back from a defeat like that, to be honest.’’