Boots and all | Valley are not the only ones paying penalty for poor judgment

It was as clear as daylight what Valley’s game-plan was against Hong Kong Cricket Club last week – win with a bonus point.

The siege of the Leighton Asia HKCC line couldn’t have been explained otherwise. Societe Generale Valley were encamped around it for most of the match, yet came away empty-handed thanks to a heroic defence, something which the Spartans of old would have admired.

A victory with four tries or more and not allowing HKCC to get a losing bonus point would have given Valley a slim chance of winning the HKRFU Premiership title on the final round this Saturday.

Yet, I can’t help but think how Valley got it wrong. For starters, while the forwards dominated the set pieces, especially the scrum, their dangerous backs hardly saw the ball. When you have two great finishers like Dave Vainqueur and Salom Yiu Kam-shing out on the wings, it was a travesty not to see the ball being shipped out wide.

Valley’s halves combination of scrum-half Khrist Kopetzky and fly-half Reece Hamon must take some responsibility for this. In the first-half Hamon opted to kick to gain territory when a better option would have been to use his wingers. Then in a bruising second half, Kopetzky chose to keep it tight with his forwards.

Vainqueur was never given the opportunity to stretch his legs. The few times he did get the ball, it was in closed space and he was immediately shut down.