Jacobsen livid with poor performance
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:52
Scottish international prop forward Allan Jacobsen has described Edinburgh ‘s 27-16 defeat at home to Leinster on the Saturday as "unacceptable" and "depressing".
The honest assessment from the 30-year-old clearly highlighted his disappointment with the teams showing in the first half. While they improved in the second half the game was possibly already over after the Irish side had scored their four tries in the first forty minutes of action.
"That first half was unacceptable. I know the boys feel the same. We were just terrible in that first half.
"What we were doing in the second half we have to do from the start, and I don't think that's something you can train to do. You just have to be mentally right to do it, and we weren't.
"Next week we go to France and we will have to be right.
"I said at the end I had to apologise for the way we played in the first half and I know the boys, who are gutted, just gutted, feel the same. Everybody was guilty. We just missed one-on-one tackles [and] against those kind of players you are going to get punished.
"There's no reason for that, no excuse. It's a personal thing. It was everyone's fault. It was a bit of everything. Sometimes it is somebody making a mistake; sometimes it was guy's exposed because somebody else was not working hard enough and there was too much room to cover.
"You can take some comfort from the way we came back – but, we say that time and time again, blah, blah, blah."
Clearly upset after the poor result Jacobsen explained that his team were determined to improve and to put together 80 minutes of the type of rugby they knew they were capable of.
"We are just sick of it and it's hard to put your finger on things. We got told what to do in training and we train [for] what to do. [Then] we turn up in the first half and don't do it, although in the second half we are able to employ our tactics.
"At the end of the day it was unacceptable the way we performed from [no's] 1-15 in that first half. Depressing...
"There were a lot of mistakes they capitalised on and although we fought back in the European Cup against a team like Leinster you can't afford to give starts; you can't afford to give anybody starts.
"I've played in games where we have had bigger beatings. This time we had expectations of ourselves and our supporters expected more of us, so to go out and play like that first up at home leaves you battling to get through.
"We've got to perform week in, week out, for 80 minutes and we are not doing it.
"We'll train knowing we have to put it right not just in practice but in a game which we aim to do next week."
