Rayer blasts ‘shoddy’ Blues after loss to league strugglers

The Blues trailed 34-0 at the interval, and even though they improved after the break to score two tries of their own, they conceded another five.

“Our performance was ever so disappointing,” said Rayer. “We have got a lot of supporters who have travelled down here today and spent their hard-earned money coming to watch us, and they have got every right to feel like having a pop at us this week.

“All we can do is rock up on Tuesday evening, get out on the paddock, and consign the DVD of this match to the bin.”

Rayer added: “It is a long trek and it is a tough place to come, but we didn’t help ourselves in the first half.

“I had no problem with the second half, because you are going to throw the ball about when you are chasing the game, and you inevitably get errors and the game opens up.

“Everybody has got to look at themselves over that first-half performance, including us as coaches.

“We didn’t get our preparation right, because there seemed to be a spark missing right from the first kick-off.

“The elation of beating Yorkshire Carnegie last week is a distant memory now, and we have certainly got to look at ourselves.

“There was plenty of endeavour, but there was just a lack of edge and lack of spark.

“We were clumsy. You don’t criticise guys for having a go and making handling errors, but there was also some shoddy tackling and some shoddy decision-making that really was not up to what we expect.”

One area of concern was the scrummage, where the Blues gave away several penalties to their opponents.

“We got penalised off the park at scrum time by the referee,” said Rayer. “He sees what he sees, and that didn’t help, and we have got to speak to him about that because those scrums allowed the Pirates to build pressure and points.

“With Kieran Hallett kicking his conversions, seven points suddenly becomes 14 and then 21, and the scoreboard really races away from you, and that’s where we were at half-time.

“That is not taking anything away from the Pirates though, who were outstanding at times. They were magnificent, and as much as we were disappointed with ourselves, a lot of what the Pirates did today was excellent and we must applaud that.”