Brace for Bobby caps good game against Bucharest
Falcons prop Rob Vickers was at the heart of a solid Falcons performance against Bucharest Wolves in Romania on Saturday, as a strong scrum provided the platform for the team to record a 10-52 win in the city of Cluj Napoca.
The result saw the club book their place in the quarter finals of the European Rugby Challenge Cup, and while Vickers says he and his team mates did well, there is, as usual elements to refine and perfect.
“We came out to Romania last year and just snuck it, so we didn’t come out here expecting anything other than a really tough task and our job throughout the game was to be professional. We did that in most areas but, there were some that we missed the targets that we had set ourselves and we will review that next week.”
“The standards of this team have grown and grown in the last eight weeks and although we scored 52 points, we will be asking ourselves had we achieved all of our targets, would we have scored more? The end result is though, we’ve won the game, qualified for the quarter finals and so it’s a pat on the back for that.”
A number of scrum penalties earned the Falcons the chance to gain territory and build pressure in the right areas of the field, with Vickers a key component of that effort. For the man himself though, there is still room to improve and that will be worked on in the build up to Sunday’s game against Sale Sharks.
“It was pretty good, it’s not the finished article and it’s not perfect and we will continue to work hard but our scrum is something we pride ourselves on, Micky Ward is a proud man and we will sit down and review the game next week so we can refine our processes and work hard towards getting it right again next week.”
“That is not to take anything away from the Wolves though, who did really well and had some good players in there who were pretty abrasive throughout the game.”
One of three Falcons to grab two tries on the day, Vickers’ efforts saw him secure admittance to an exclusive club on Saturday, joining Eric “Two Try” Fry in becoming the second Falcons prop to bag two tries in a game this season.
With one coming from a powerful rolling maul, the second saw the 33 year old dive in from 20m out although “Bobby the Brace” revealed attack coach Dave Walder had some observations on his technique.
“The second try, the total distance I ran probably was equal to all the other tries in my career, because they have all been flops! Dave came in and said he wasn’t too impressed with my dive and I said I’ve never had to do that before so I panicked!”
