By John Wilkinson COACH Boris Stankovich was both happy and frustrated with parts of Coventry’s game as they ended their home campaign with a 36-16 win over Darlington Mowden Park.
Dominant in the set scrum, Cov impressively survived a difficult spell down to 13 men after two yellow cards in as many minutes midway through the second half – but Stankovich maintained they should never have put themselves in that position.
“It was good, but we made it difficult for ourselves,” he said. “We didn’t play for territory, we didn’t manage the game very well, and we paid for it in the end with those two yellow cards – we kept them in the game.
“It wasn’t until we got the two yellows that e kicked ourselves into life.
“We did well to stop them scoring in those ten minutes, but the most disappointing thing was that we weren’t doing it with 15 men on the park and it took two in the sin bin to kick us into action.
“It was a game where we didn’t manage ourselves very well.
“Once again the set piece was good, but I just think that we didn’t manage the territory very well – we put ourselves under a huge amount of pressure, we tried to play out from our 22 and we turned the ball over.
“We couldn’t look after the ball, and without it you don’t win the game.”
Added Stankovich: “We are always searching for the perfect performance, we’ve just got to keep working and keep getting better.
“It’s hugely frustrating because we know what we can do and I guess it’s the same rhetoric every week – we have a good game and then we have not so good a game.
“That’s where we are at, but there’s been massive progress over the season as a whole, certainly from where we first started, and that’s pleasing.
“There’s one more game to go now, at Loughborough on an artificial pitch which will be a different game altogether and we’ll see how we go there.
“There’s a lot to play for, hopefully we’ll get another win away from home, and to finish on a run of eight wins would be something.
“It’s all started to come together in the latter part of the season, so that’s something to take with us and look forward to next season.”
