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Flattened Force feel the pain
29/03/2008 7:48:58 AM
Justin Chadwick
Sportal
Western Force coach John Mitchell has put his players on notice following the side's shock 32-16 loss to the Stormers at Subiaco Oval on Friday night.
Mitchell said the error-riddled performance from the Force was 'not acceptable', while captain Nathan Sharpe labelled the performance the franchise's worst 'by a country mile'.
"Very disappointing performance - not acceptable," Mitchell said after the match.
"We ignored the hard places tonight and they fully deserved their victory. They did everything to us that we wanted to do to them and they were good at it."
"We didn't control our attitude and didn't give them enough respect in the hard places as they call it."
"We just weren't brave or brutal tonight in our performance and we fell well short. Our leaders have addressed the players and I also addressed the players and they understand that we are disappointed."
Sharpe admitted there may have been some complacency going into the clash against the Stormers.
"I don't think it's a matter of getting ahead of ourselves but it's probably just a little bit of a relaxed attitude coming home and thinking you win your home games," Sharpe said.
"Certainly it was our worst performance by a country mile over the last two seasons. And to do it on the back of some good performances away from home is very disappointing but, as Mitch said, it's not lost on the player group. The beauty for us is we've got two more home games (coming up) to right ourselves."
Mitchell said he was confident his charges would bounce back against the Bulls next week.
"I would like to think this group will learn from this performance," he said.
"There is no place in professional football for you if you can't learn quickly. And there's no place out there on the pitch if you don't have the maturity to control your attitude for the whole of the round robin."
"I've got total faith in the group and some players are a bit more experienced than others and we found out again tonight that some players have some maturity to go in terms of this competition. The only way you can learn from it is if you experience it and maybe some guys tonight have experienced a huge learning curve."
Sharpe echoed his coach's sentiments.
"I'm confident we are going to play well next week," he said.
"This team is not a team that's going to put two performances like that back to back and you will see a completely different attitude next week. One bad performance doesn't make you bad footballers."
Force flyhalf Matt Giteau copped a knock to his hip in the second half and was replaced by Nick Cummins in the 66th minute, but Mitchell was confident his star playmaker would be right to go against the Bulls.