Titans’ wanted stars keen to finish play-off challenge

Defeat in the opening game, a four-point deficit to already make up and five key men bound for the Premiership and Celtic League does not paint the most positive of pictures.

But not all stories are told in the first line.

Rotherham outplayed Bedford and but for more ruthlessness and greater stamina would have earned a significant scalp on the opening weekend of the promotion play-offs.

They may be bottom but there are 25 points still to play for. As lowest seeds and with the smallest budget in Pool B, it has always been about punching above their weight for Rotherham.

And of the players, a handful are bound for Premiership clubs at the end of the season; captain Sean Dougall, his fellow forwards Robin Copeland, Semisi Taulava, Rob O’Donnell and Sam Dickinson.

All five were picked off the scrap heap, shaped, moulded and polished up by coach Andre Bester who moves them onto bigger and better things with a pat on the back and a good luck message in the back pocket.

He has done it every year in his two spells at Rotherham Titans; Hendre Fourie and Erik Lund just two of the men to have graduated from Bester’s Clifton Lane school of hard knocks.

The South African is already using a budget dwarfed by most of the teams they are up against in the promotion play-offs to scout the next Fouries, Lunds, Dougalls and Copelands.

Not that he or anyone at the club is writing off this season. Far from it. “I like to be in a position to chase teams,” said Bester, whose side squandered a 10-0 lead and numerous chances to finish Bedford off before succumbing to three tries in the last seven minutes.

And for any Titans fan in the crowd of 1,586 fearing that those players who are leaving in the summer might not be playing their heart out for the Titans cause, their commitment on Saturday could not be questioned.

“My priority at the moment is with Rotherham,” insisted Dougall, whose stock has risen so greatly under Bester that the big Irish provincial clubs are circling.

“Whether I stay or go next season is irrelevant.

“I want to make sure we finish this season on a high and that’s my priority, and it’s the same with all the lads.

“Everyone is aware of the talk going on off the pitch about guys moving, but we’ve done so much hard work to get this far it would be a shame to rest on our laurels, and for guys who are leaving to not care.

“It’s not like that and it won’t be like that. We’ve got a job to do and that’s to win the play-offs.

“Everyone is putting 100 per cent in and I’m very positive we’ll get back on track.”

If commitment can not be questioned, the execution of basic principles and their inability to squeeze the Bedford jugular is open to debate.

Rotherham swept into the lead within the first minute with a flowing move down the left that ended with a Garry Law pass inside to Shane Monahan to score.

But after Law converted and then added a penalty, Rotherham failed to build on their score.

Law missed two straightforward kicks before the break and they made a hash of two lineouts on the Blues line.

By this time Bedford – who finished second in the league to Rotherham’s seventh – had pulled a try back through Ollie Dodge and a penalty from James Pritchard to trail 13-8.

Law missed another kick at goal at the start of the second half before Pritchard made it a two-point game with a penalty from halfway.

Rotherham then upped the ante with a long possession that drew a sin-binning for the Blues’ Darren Fox but yielded no resulting penalty try.

And then hooker Dan Baines thought he had scored in the corner after a typically intrusive line-break from Robin Copeland, but he was just forced into touch by Josh Bassett at the death.

All they could show for their dominance was a Law penalty from in front of the posts and when Bedford director of rugby Mike Rayer sent on a raft of replacements the game turned.

Don Barrell was driven over from an attacking lineout, Bassett danced his way through tired tackles and Darryl Veenendaal did likewise to grab not only an unlikely win, but also a bonus point for Bedford.

“We were in their 22 for long periods of the second half and to come away with nothing, is not good enough,” said Dougall.

“It’s disappointing, but we can’t get ahead of ourselves, we can’t get down about it. We’ve got to come back in on Monday and start again.

“I wouldn’t write us off just yet.

“Leeds away is a big challenge but we’ve beaten them once before.

“And we’ve got a chip on our shoulder now, we want to go there and prove a point. If we win at Leeds we’re back on track.”

Rotherham Titans: Foden, Hamilton, McCall, Nonu (Godfrey 77), Monahan, Law, Williams; Cahill (Kilbane 77), Baines, Hooper, Dickinson, Maddison (Griffiths 79), Copeland, Dougall, Taulava (Kirwan 78) Unused replacements: Stagg, Vaioleti, Rhodes.

Bedford Blues: Pritchard, Dodge, Staff, Vass (Burke 51), Bassett, Sharp (Lennard 61), Baldwin (Veenendaal 61); Walsh (Steenkamp 73), Cochrane, Boulton, Tomes (Barrell 61), Tupai, Rae, Fox, Fisher (Harding 61). Unused replacement: Locke.

Referee: T Wigglesworth (RFU).