Barkley: 'Our Defence Must Improve'

While London Welsh can draw some positives from the four-try bonus point they collected at Bath on Saturday, the Exiles must improve their defence says fly half Olly Barkley.

Captaining London Welsh on his return to his former club, Barkley kicked three conversions and was part of a backline which displayed far more cutting edge than was on show six days earlier against Exeter Chiefs.

“Our attack looks good at the moment and it will get a lot better. We need to feed off that energy and apply it to the defence as well,” said Barkley.

“There’s definitely a lot of positives to take. Every game we play we need to draw on the positives and build on them, and work very hard in the week to rectify what’s gone wrong.

“We showed some real promise at the start and our attack had a lot more energy about it and a lot more purpose. We were a lot more organised than we were against Exeter, but as against Exeter we’re leaking yards, points and tries to easy.

“We’re making it far too easy for teams to score. We need to make it a lot harder for them than we are at the moment.”

Bath’s seven tries at The Rec took the number of tries conceded by Welsh in their opening two Aviva Premiership fixtures to 14. And for Barkely, for all of the Exiles’ attacking prowesson Saturday, they must tighten up in defence if they are to produce the wins they need to keep them in the top flight.

“We can’t butter up what’s gone on defensively; 100 points in two games is unacceptable. This side is better than that and we need to be better than that. If we can keep teams to 15-20 points then we stand a chance of picking up some decent wins,” added Barkley, who is confident that Welsh can make those improvements.

“This side will learn a lot as it goes on. It’s a very different league to the Championship. It might take some time to adjust to the pace and intensity of the Premiership – it is a very different proposition in terms of how you defend, how intense teams are and how quickly they come at you.

“I’m sure they’ll be a little bit of teething, as is happening at the moment, but there’s lots of positives we can take – our attack and how we’ve bounced back from last week.

“We showed we can attack and score tries against good teams and good defences. That’s a good Bath side with a lot of good players. We need to take confidence from that. We just need to make sure we’re much better in defence.

“There is no doubt that this side is going to get better and better.  It’s a long season and we’re going to work hard and get a lot better.

"When we get possession we can do stuff with it but if you don’t have a foundation to start from it makes the game very, very hard. Set-piece and defence is something we’ll address during the week.

“If we can get ball we can be dangerous, we just need to make sure we win it to start off with and when we haven’t got the ball we’re more effective.”

The Club continues to reinforce its relationship with the people, businesses and communities across Oxfordshire and has adopted the strap-line ‘Premiership Rugby in Oxford - Be part of it’.