Fluency is the key as Bulls step up to mark

Fluency and adaptability is the key to Banbury Bulls' excellent first half of the season says head coach Matt Goode.
Tomm Gray forces his way over to score his first try at Bicester for Banbury Bulls. Photo: Simon GrieveTomm Gray forces his way over to score his first try at Bicester for Banbury Bulls. Photo: Simon Grieve
Tomm Gray forces his way over to score his first try at Bicester for Banbury Bulls. Photo: Simon Grieve

Bulls go into the mid-winter break in third place in Wadworth 6X South West One East after chalking up their fourth win on the spin.

Goode was delighted to see Bulls complete their first double of the campaign on the first weekend of the second round of games in Saturday’s 57-10 success at improving Bicester.

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And Goode was especially pleased with the way his players can adapt to different positions, as flanker Matthew Powell did when replacing Joe Mills on the wing.

Goode added: “When we do play our patterns everybody individually knows what they are supposed to being doing. Whether they’re playing back row or out on the wing it doesn’t matter as we’ve got the players who can adapt.

“Everybody is comfortable with our game plan and what we’re doing in our training sessions. We’ve got four training sessions between now and Chippenham to prepare for that game.”

Looking back on the derby success, Goode added: “It was business as usual for us. We’re into the second half of the season and teams will know how we play so on the back of that we’ve changed a few things, clearly it worked on Saturday.

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“We’ve set ourselves targets and we hit every one on Saturday, that’s really pleasing from a coaching point of view. It was also great to see the strength in depth from the boys that came in.

“This is a tough place to come, we just needed to stick to our targets and to our plan and we did that. Bicester were better than when we played them at Banbury but we were just too strong for them.”