Marty Banks vowing an improved team effort against Canterbury
Tasman No 10 Marty Banks is expecting a significantly improved team effort against Canterbury at Trafalgar Park on Saturday.
There's been no sugar-coating the fact that the Tasman Makos produced one of the worst defensive performances of their 10-year history against Counties Manukau last Saturday.
It was perhaps ironic then that Tasman's prolific No 10 Marty Banks should become the first provincial player this season to pass 100 points in the same game as the team collectively missed a staggering 47 tackles and conceded five tries in their 42-33 national provincial championship rugby loss in Pukekohe.
Banks' 15-point haul from the match pushed him to 113 for the season to date, still some way from the record 173 he scored for the province last year. But after two consecutive losses, Banks is much less concerned about personal milestones than he is helping to get the team back on course ahead of the premiership semifinals.
That starts with premiership leaders Canterbury at Trafalgar Park on Saturday, followed by an equally tough away match against defending champions Taranaki the following Thursday. In the meantime, there's been a fair bit of soul-searching in the Tasman camp after last Saturday's meek effort against Counties.
"Probably just a little bit of effort that we're not putting in is costing us and abviously we missed 47 tackles on the weekend and any team that does that probably deserves to have 50 points put up against them," Banks said. "So we were lucky we only got 42 against us in the end. Hopefully we don't have a replay of that this weekend against Canterbury."
There were extenuating circumstances on Saturday, with both midfielder David Havili and fullback Robbie Malneek sitting in the sin-bin during a costly first-half spell.
"It doesn't help when you get get two guys put in the sin-bin at the same time, but Counties came out and they wanted it and I guess we never really clicked into second gear. We just dawdled through the game and that's the way it looked. That's the way it felt when we were out there too, we just never executed well on D[efence] and obviously that didn't translate too well into our attack because we were always on the back foot trying to chase the game.
"In the end, the better team won on the day and there are no real excuses for it. We just didn't deserve it."
Banks said that the players had needing little reminding about their performance.
"After a performance like that, you don't really need too much said to you by the coaches. The players are well aware that we're under-performing and especially on the defensive side, we're not silly and oblivious to the fact that we missed a heap of tackles.
"We've turned a lot of corners in the last few years and the union as a whole is on a massive rise. But to put a performance out like that, we're definitely not happy with it. Take nothing away from Counties, they came out all guns blazing...and they definitely created the opportunities to win the game and we just didn't front.
"There's really no sugar-coating it, we got what we deserved from the coaches and I guess it's up to us now to turn it around this week and put in a performance that we can be proud of against Canterbury."
If anything, Banks agreed that playing two of the competition's toughest teams in the lead-up to the semifinals could be to Tasman's advantage.
"It's a good build up to the semifinals, it'll harden us up and definitely highlight points that we need to fix or points that are going well. And if we can't get up for Canterbury, we'll probably never get up for anyone. So we're looking forward to Saturday and it probably can't come around fast enough to be honest.
"It's always a good game Canterbury and Tasman. It's always a game people look forward to watching and playing in, so if we're going to play our best footy, it'll be this Saturday - but time will tell."
- Stuff
