RUGBY - Flat performance angers Anscombe

Perhaps the weight of expectation combined with the burden of unwelcome destiny was just too much to bear.
Ken Going's funeral, doom merchants threatening demotion, messages from punters who had bet on success ... whatever it was, the Northland rugby team found it all a little too much to handle in round two of the Air NZ Cup against Hawke's Bay in Napier on Saturday night.
Northland were wiped 43-31, producing one of those scowl-inducing performances littered with schoolboy errors and slipshod tackling that everyone thought had been buried when they beat Waikato in round one.
Now the Northland side face a stiff test of their mettle with a trip down country to Dunedin to tackle Otago this weekend. It will be a game that will either plant Northland back among the candidates vying for one of the quarter-final spots, or cast them in the now familiar role of championship battlers fighting off the dogs of mediocrity.
It is obviously a scenario that the main Northland scriptwriters, coach Mark Anscombe and skipper Justin Collins, can see unfolding before them. There was a real sense of begrudging resignation as they tried to analyse the performance on Saturday night.
Collins looked tired. Anscombe was almost angry, although we've seen him worse.
Collins wondered how his team could be a defensive fortress in week one and about as watertight as a colander in week two.
"It was a stark contrast, really, to our performance last week. We won the game with our defence last week and defence really lost us the game this week. We managed to be patient with the ball last week but we were just not patient enough this week. We scored a few points, which was good, but too many soft tries we gave away as well," Collins said.
"The thing with this competition every year is that it is based on consistency. To have an up-week then take a step backwards is disappointing. We don't want to get into that rut, we just need to make improvements each week," he said.
Anscombe does a good angry and he was hovering in between seething resentment and door-kicking vandal at the final whistle.
Ruing the last-minute withdrawal of his playmaker David Holwell, who was hit with the'flu and was left at home and replaced by rookie Derek Carpenter, the coach knows he has some work to do this week.
"It's not the losing that hurts most, it's the manner in which you do lose. I thought we were pretty flat today. I thought we let in soft tries and never really took it too them, and never had a hunger to win that game. It was just flat," Anscombe said.
"I think it is (about) learning to be able to have a good performance and then put it away and have that hunger to do it again next week. We have a good performance and watch other games and we think we are there and we're not."
It was a harsh assessment of a game that produced a four-try bonus point for Northland but one that rang true when measured against a surprisingly tentative Hawke's Bay side.
After trading early tries, the home team got a 15-7 advantage by shifting the ball wide to their strike wingers, Jason Kupa and Zac Guildford. Had it not been for the counter attacking styles of Jared Payne and the unpredictable Rene Ranger, Northland would have been gone by halftime.
Instead Northland were just three points down, 22-19, at the break but then fell off the pace in the second half when Jason Shoemark then replacement Mark Jackman slid past poor tacklers to score.
Now ahead 36-19, Matt Berquist rubbing salt into each wound with his radar boot nailing conversions, Hawke's Bay were in control. Northland did reply and could easily have set up a hang-dog finish. Instead they coughed up possession, kicked aimlessly and fell off tackles.
It was a flat as a pancake finish when an explosion of desire was required.