BUCK SHELFORD, the Saracens head coach, accused his players of abdicating their responsibilities after the men in black were dumped unceremoniously out of the Powergen Cup, 51-20 at Kingsholm on Saturday.

Having seen his patched-up side concede eight tries and slip to their heaviest defeat since he took charge at the beginning of the season, the former All Black's skipper was livid with the spineless nature of his side's performance against a rampant Gloucester outfit.

"In terms of the game plan, they didn't play anywhere near what we talked about and thats because they go off and do there own thing," fumed the head coach.

"The system is there to look after them not challenge them. A lot of our players today played more like individual players than as a team. Players are just not believing in the system at times and that's why they get beat.

"At times, I think a few of our older players got shown up today and also the youth and inexperience in the side gets found out at times. A lot of our players didn't have great games today.

"There were a lot of lessons to be learnt today: if you don't prepare properly you get bashed up. They've got the ability to do the job, but if they dont prepare well then they are not going to play well," added Shelford, whose side travelled up to Gloucester on the morning of the match.

The straight-talking Kiwi continued his tirade, explaining: "It makes me angry inside because I know they have the ability to tackle and they know it as well but we are probably not as tough on ourselves as we should be. I think some of the players can talk it up really well but when it comes to producing they don't deliver. You can't afford to miss 35 tackles. Missed tackles and not trusting the system let us down and we got burnt.

"Weve got to stand up and be counted week in week out. I'm not going to let them carry on making the same mistakes because at the end of the day they get paid for winning not losing."

In this respect, Shelford anticipates making further additions to the squad in a bid to find the winning formula.

"We haven't had a lot of changes in personnel but the changes in personnel will come. We can't afford to now but there will be changes in the near future.

"We have to make sure we pick the right players for the absence of the nine or ten who are going to be at the World Cup and get people on temporary contracts for that period.

"There are two retirements to start as both of their bodies are falling apart. Timmy (Horan) has actually had a good run. Abdel (Benazzi) is going to need to have an op in the next three or four weeks, but I don't want to put him in for that just yet as we have got two important games coming up and we need that extra lock."

Asked to pinpoint where his side came unstuck on Saturday, Shelford replied: "We have got a bit of work to do in our front row. Until we start getting some real dominance up front we are not going to be able to get that team ethic really working.

"You can see that without David Flatman we are not handling that area well. Our line-out is alright, our driving play is going fairly well, but the speed to the breakdown is where Gloucester really cleaned us out, and that's an area we are going to have to work on really hard this week. I think a lot of it is in the head rather than physical; that's the area where they really beat us."

Shelford did, however, glean hope from the performance of the backs who are among the leading try-scorers in the league.

"I think we've got the talent in the backs with (Tom) Shanklin, who, when he is on song, is actually quite dangerous. I think he is a very good runner of the ball, we just don't get it too him enough and our centres probably play with it too much rather than giving him the ball and that's an area we will look at this week.

"Having said that, I thought Gloucester played very, very well and we received the backlash. I don't think any team would have stopped them today.'

For a full match report from Kingsholm and a look ahead to Sunday's Zurich Premiership clash with the Cherry & Whites, don't miss Friday's edition of The Watford Observer.

January 27, 2003 13:30