COACH SEES POSITIVES BUT DEFEAT HURTS EMIRATES WESTERN FORCE
Emirates Western Force coach John Mitchell was tremendously proud of his team's effort to dominate against the Sharks, but obviously disappointed with the loss leading into the bye.
The Force controlled the game with 66 per cent of possession, 68 per cent in the Sharks half and nine minutes to one in the Sharks 22, but eventually lost 22-10 at Subiaco Oval to have just two wins from six games to be five points outside of the top-four.
Mitchell was delighted with the team's effort, but questioned the way the Sharks were allowed to snatch two balls the Force were in possession of at the breakdown to score two of their three tries.
"The effort was huge. It's pretty hard coming off a football field when you've dominated territory and possession and didn’t get the win. We just didn't get conversion out of that possession we had. We had them in all sorts of trouble in the first half and were unfortunate not to be up by a lot more than we were," Mitchell said.
"In the end, we didn’t deserve to win and the scoreboard reflects that. It's unfortunate when a team that plays all the football doesn’t win the match and that's the hardest thing to swallow.
"To give them two tries out of our breakdown where it was questionable whether the Sharks players came through the gate to disrupt the ball was disappointing, but we'll have a look at that. They were costly as it turned out and they really hurt."
Mitchell will focus on the positives to come out of dominating a game against one of the championship favourites and hopes to turn things around with home games against the Reds and Hurricanes following the bye.
"Sometimes in sport you never really have the choice how to lose and that's how this game turned out. We certainly have a choice how to come back, though, and the way we can deal with that is by working together," he said.
"There were some fantastic positives and some of our play was exceptional. They were on the ropes, but unfortunately they scrambled and held on. It was an extremely brutal match and nobody can question the effort or how our guys tried to play, they gave it a good crack."
James O'Connor was impressive in his first game starting at fullback and even more so after copping a big knock. That won't keep him out of the Reds game in a fortnight, but a potentially fractured finger might that he is having X-rays on.
Aside from him, Mitchell expects a full squad to pick from to take on the Reds with Cameron Shepherd, Richard Brown and Sam Wykes due back.
"James was good and was proactive on the catch, but unfortunately he took a bang to the head so was under a bit of duress. He is a very capable man, with a good head on young shoulders," he said.
"We'll let the boys have a break and we'll be back in on Thursday. We will assess the bodies early in the week, but then later we will address the conditioning and look at our own game to see what we need to modify, and then prepare for the Reds.
"We are expecting a full player list going into the reds game. We'll have Shepherd, Brown and Wykes back into consideration, so that will be good for competition for places going forward."
Emirates Western Force captain Nathan Sharpe was also disappointed to not come away with the win but is far from ready to concede the hopes of making the finals are over.
"It's disappointing. Those couple of bust out tries really cost us after we felt like it was only going to be a matter of time until the scoreboard opened up for us, but it didn’t happen. Unfortunately, we didn’t break it down well enough at crucial times and were guilty of making little errors when in good position," Sharpe said.
"The result takes more meaning because of the bye next week and we'll have two weeks to look at the performance. The good thing about it is that in parts it was some of the best football we've played all year and we'll take that with us into the next game.
"Because there are so many points on offer each week it doesn’t take long for the points to come through. This obviously makes it a little more difficult and sometimes results are taken out of your hands, and we probably lost a bit of control over our own destiny, but if we win all our games we'll be in the finals."
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