Heagerty happy with Macc’s fight
MACCLESFIELD head coach Giles Heagerty was delighted with his team’s second half performance as they scored 35 unanswered points in 40 minutes to recover from an eight-point half-time deficit at Tynedale.
The Blues head coach felt he knew at half time that his side would get back into the match, but was impressed by how comprehensively they did it.
“With eight minutes to go in the first half I could see that Tynedale had gone. I didn’t say that to anybody at half time because we had to make a couple of substitutions and change a couple of things in how we were attacking.
“But I was confident we had the fitness and physicality to be able to come out on top.
“Was I expecting us to go and then score 35 un answered points in a half? No, Was I expecting us to be able to stop Tynedale from pressing our half way line? No, but the character we showed was outstanding and the impact of the bench was everything we could have asked for.”
Giles was impressed by his team’s mental strength and believes that the player’s now know that if they stick to the game plan, they can go and win games.
Heagerty said his side didn’t need the half time ‘hairdryer’ treatment, his players knew that they had to go out and fix it.
“I think coming from behind like we did shows a degree of mental fortitude, I think it shows that when we actually do what we set out to do, we actually are a very good side.
“I think the issue stems from not doing what we set out to do.
“We probably tried to play a little too much rugby, certainly in the first 10 minutes.”
“I just think everybody agreed what we had to do and went out and did it. There was no hairdryer treatment, there was no screaming and shouting it was all very calm.
“This is what we need to do and let’s go out and deliver it, and that’s a big step forward I think.”
Heagerty felt that despite being down at half time, and conceding 20 points, it was one of the best performances he had seen from a side at Macclesfield in his tenure at the club.
“I think that the performance was one of the best I’ve seen from a Macclesfield team in my time at the club whether that be as assistant coach or head coach.
“That’s probably the best thing I can say, because we have still not played for 80 minutes, we still allowed a team to score 20 points against us, we still make similar errors, week on week giving silly penalties for not rolling away and those things are unnecessary.”
Macclesfield host Otley at Priory Park this weekend, and Heagerty is hoping for a more complete performance from his side this Saturday.
“I think it would be nice if we could play that full 80 minutes, we have two or three things I think that we need to focus on this week, which we will be doing tomorrow night and on Thursday.
“We have a couple of injury concerns, which we will have to look at and that is going to have an impact on how we play a little bit, so that is something that we will have to do some work on.”