Dawson – We need to learn our lessons

JORDAN Burns’ failure to ground the ball and give Worthing Raiders an early 14-0 lead against Blaydon on Saturday in some ways summed up the Roundstone Lane outfit’s season.

Narrow margins have resulted in Raiders losing a number of games they could and really should have won in their debut National 1 campaign.

Harlequins loanee Burns slowing down and being tackled before he put the ball down against Blaydon illustrated that perfectly as they went on to lose 32-24.

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Raiders head coach Kieron Dawson cut a lonely figure sitting on the pitch alone for around ten minutes after Saturday’s game, and that was borne from the frustration he feels of players not learning their lessons.

He felt that that second try would have killed the game as a contest, even at the early stage, and said: “We didn’t put the ball down, the kick over the top, we could have had four tries at half-time, but we didn’t.

“Players aren’t learning that’s all, they are just not learning. Not putting the ball down by the posts, getting tackled and knocking it on, at 14-0 that would have been game over. Their heads would have dropped.

“We practice and practice and practice taking line-outs and they get two penalties, kick them to the corner and two driven line-outs score two tries.

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“We are just not learning, that said if we do go down then hopefully we will have learned a few lessons, although I am not really sure.

“But we still have two games to go and we’ll see what we can get from those and we may still have an outside chance, but not if we play like that again.

“It’s key decision making, which we are not making that is costing us.

“They pinned us back a couple of times and we try and run from everywhere which is the philosophy we try to instill, but eventually someone has to kick it and clear our lines.

“We know our weaknesses, but I think most other teams seem to know our weaknesses and they exploit them.”

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