Well, I made it out to Summer Hill to see what Trinity has to offer this year. They finished up beating Oakhill without doing anything to suggest that they'll be a force in the competition this year.
Confession: I arrived about 20 minutes after kickoff, so it may be that I missed something significant. At that stage Oakhill led 14-10 (although you wouldn't know, because the scoreboard was on the fritz).
Shortly before half time, Trinity launched an attack in Oakhill's quarter and, with a penalty advantage Hunter Hannaford (10) stabbed through a grubber that sat up nicely for Olly White (13) who took his chance nicely. Hannaford converted from wide out and it was 17-14 at oranges (or whatever it is they have these days).
Early in the second half I formed that view that whoever scored first would win the game, because neither side looked capable of constructing more than one score. As it turned out, there was no score at all in the second half and the game ended 17-14 to Trinity. But it wasn't an effort that would have pleased the coaches.
The problem lies in the tight five. Some of whom are hard workers around the park, but their set piece was terrible. Every scrum went backwards, so 9 Orly Hatton-Ward was constantly under pressure and sometimes the ball rolled to the first receiver. The lineout was worse. There are actually no words to describe how bad it was. Trinity lost its first four throws while I was there, then won the next by accident (when a surprised player at the tail caught an overthrown ball). They indulged in all sorts of tooling around, moving players around before the throw, which confused only themselves. Look: if your lineout isn't great, you keep it simple. You pick your best jumper, support him well, and throw to him. Complicating matters only makes it worse.
So for half the game Trinity was on the back foot, even in possession. It wasn't very pretty. Hannaford is still a tremendous player, but a lot of what he did today was damage control. I thought he overplayed the grubber kick for his wingers, but I understand his desire to get the play moving forward.
All this makes it hard to evaluate the backs, because there was relatively little front-foot ball. 12 Jack Casimir made one very powerful run, but didn't seem to get the ball again. White was quiet after his try. Kian Edmed looked tidy at full back, apart from one unforced fumble at a rolling kick.
Theo Kidd (11) may or may not be the attacking weapon they say he is: you couldn't tell from what I saw, as he never had the ball in space. Certainly he's physically imposing: he was twice the size of his opposite number. He looks safe under the high ball and he effectively won the game with a great try scoring tackle when he hit an Oakhill player over the tryline a split second before he grounded the ball (think George Gregan/Jeff Wilson, only under the posts). Generally his defensive positioning was good. Paulo Tauiliili-Peleasa (4) produced another bone-crunching (but entirely legal) tackle to snuff out an Oakhill movement metres from the Trinity line. And No8 Alisi Ieao did some good work picking the ball up from some awful scrums and running hard from the back. He went off injured after one barnstorming run late in the day.
It wasn't an easy game to watch, partly because of the high error rate on both sides, and partly because one Oakhill mother spent the entire game screeching her lungs out. Truly, anyone who attends every Oakhill game this season will end up being treated for industrial deafness.
So where to for Trinity? Well, I guess there were some positives: they found a way to win, their defence held up well, and there's clearly some attacking potential in the backs. But whoever works with the forwards has a job on his hands. I'd be doing scrums and lineouts at training, and then following that with scrums and lineouts, and then repeat. Because unless Trinity improves its set piece, they'll be on the wrong end of a couple of horrible scores later in the season.
