Against a team which was languishing at the bottom of the table and was on a 7-match winless streak, it wasn’t unfair for the partisan local crowd here at Delhi’s Thyagraj Stadium to expect a win from the Dabangs. Instead what followed was a 4th straight loss for Coach Honnappa’s men, a result which pushes them further down the pecking order and distances the franchise from the playoffs for the second season running.
Talking about the shambolic display in a post match Press Conference, Honnappa conceded that the Warriors were supreme in defence and that did them in, “It was a very tight game last night, but then they kept getting those super tackles in and that is what cost us dear. We did really well in defence too but they scored the crucial tackle points and that proved crucial.”
In what turned out to be a low-scoring encounter, raiders from both teams struggled to sneak in points and Honnappa was quick to point the same, “Our strength has been our raiding. Both Kashi and Rohit have been brilliant and that wasn’t the case today. That obviously upset our plans. Especially in the end our gameplan was to not give away a point in attack and Kashi got scalped by the Warriors defence. That proved vital.”
The 3-point loss clearly has rattled the confidence that the Dabangs brought into the home leg; with hardly any time to recover and a match against the resurgent Patna Pirates lined up in a few hours, it will be interesting how they will try and turn it around.