Bournville Assistant Coach Alex Grove praised his players for the way they dealt with a traumatic week at Avery Fields.
Head Coach Matt Price stepped down after last week’s heavy defeat at Hinckley leaving former Scotland and Worcester Warriors centre Grove in charge for the National Two West game against Exeter University.
A much-improved performance was not enough to save Bourns from a 12th defeat in 13 matches but there were signs of some green shoots of recovery in the spring sunshine.
“It’s been a little disruptive this week but, credit to the guys, in terms of training, they were fully focused, they recognised the distractions in the background but they didn’t let them affect training. We had a really good week and we prepared well,” Grove said.
“We understood that Exeter were going to come here and move the ball quickly and use their point of difference which is their superior fitness and speed and we tried to use ours which was our forward power, our scrum and our drive.
“Losing your tighthead [Stef Thorp] in the first five minutes when your scrum is one of your points of difference is huge. But we re-jigged that front row and James Burgoyne, Clarkson McLeod and Jake Bailey – who has recently come back from a long lay-off all put in a big shift in hot conditions.
“We still had scrum dominance for 80 minutes. I was a little disappointed not to be rewarded for that with just penalties. I thought we would see a yellow card, but we didn’t.
“We also mauled really well which is something we worked on in training, the lineout had tidied up from the previous few weeks and we got a lot of change from that.
“So, we still had the dominance up front but we could not control the speed of ball at the breakdown. The ball was just getting quicker and quicker.
“Against student sides you need to slow them down in the contact areas to give you time to set in defence. When we did that we were really effective but more often than not the ball kept getting quicker and quicker.”
Having trailed 31-10 at the break there was a danger that Bournville would fold as they had at Hinckley but they scored three tries in the second-half – two from veteran lock Nick Murphy – to salvage a bonus point that could prove vital at the end of the season.
“I was most pleased with how we responded in the second-half. We could have felt sorry for ourselves and gone into our shells. But we didn’t. They came out and it was tit for tat in the second-half in terms of try scoring,” Grove said.
“Murph normally sits out the games against the university sides because of the speed of them. But we leant on him and said: this is where we are going to go after them – scrum and set piece – and you are a huge part of that.
“To go 80 minutes against Exeter playing at that pace with a low error count was outstanding. He negated their drive and sacked a lot of their mauls and was integral in our drive. The power we get from him at scrum time is huge.
“He’s 39 years old so to get that out of a 39 year-old was impressive.”
