RUGBY - The Wood on Rugby

Northland went into the game against Hawke's Bay on Friday night with the coaches stating that the training during the week and the lack of discipline by some players was below an acceptable professional standard.
So they were understandably concerned about whether Northland would be in the right frame of mind and turn up to play to the high standard needed to beat the Magpies.
Fortunately the Northland team did turn up to play and produced some excellent rugby. Unfortunately they once again fell just short of a victory. This has now become a signature of this team. They get very close to good sides but fail to nail the end result.
Rugby is made up of a number of different aspects including attack, defence, breakdown, set-pieces and kick restarts.
If we analyse each of these, it may give us some clue as to why Northland are not in a better position than they currently are.
Generally in attack, I believe they are making best use of the personnel available. At times they have not used as much width as I would have liked but they have generally scored sufficient points to win games.
Their defence is slightly inferior to their attack and often they will defend very well for long periods but then slip off a couple of tackles which provide the opposition with points.
The breakdown is an area where we do not bring enough intensity. When we do make tackles not enough pressure is put on the tackled player in an effort to get at the ball.
Our set-pieces have not been dominant and both scrums and lineout have come under repeated pressure. We have lost critical scrums and lineouts which have had a major bearing on points being scored by the opposition and a lack of points being scored by us.
Kick restarts are generally a disaster. Each time we score the objective is to secure the kick-off ball and then get down into the opposition half. This enables you to put pressure on the opposition without the threat that they will score points immediately after you have just scored yourself.
So clearly there are several areas where we did not perform as well as we would hope.
One must ask the question through all of this _ why is this happening? I would have to be a lot closer to the team and the training environment to get the answers to this question.
It doesn't appear to be a fitness issue, therefore it either comes down to other aspects, including personal performance of individual players, or a lack of other accurate training within the team environment.
Let's hope next weekend, with a home game against Counties-Manakau, a lot of these issues can be resolved and Northland get a win that leaves a faint chance of securing a quarterfinal spot.