'A' Team Wins At Gloucester
By AlanQuin
December 14 2004
The title-holders march on and last night gained their sixteenth successive Zurich A League victory beating Gloucester A at Kingsholm by 22 points to 53. Eight tries were more than enough to see off the Cherry and Whites who were dependent upon their Academy players in the wake of an injury crisis.
In truth it should have been by an even greater margin. Leaving aside one or two opportunities missed, a try was disallowed for an alleged double movement and later a deliberate foul on Henry Barratt should have produced a penalty try. Both that offence, a deliberate tackle on the winger, who had kicked the ball through and across the try line, which prevented his winning the race for the touchdown, and the one for which the penalty try was awarded, a Neil Back type hand in the scrum as the Quins’ forwards powered over the Gloucester line, should have also produced yellow cards for deliberate professional fouls. Leniency was clearly the watchword by which the game was conducted.
From the start Quins made the intention clear when in the very first minute a scorching run by Andy Dunne almost resulted in a try in the right corner. Instead, a penalty which was turned into a catch and drive from the resulting lineout brought the first try by James Hayter in the third minute. Dunne missed the conversion from the touch-line.
Gloucester did make the effort to respond. Teague kicked them into good positions with long balls into touch but unforced errors cost them advantage and loss of possession. Then from an excellent break by Masson, Molitika broke through the defence to run in the second try from 30 metres. Dunne’s kick hit the post but Quins led 0 – 10.
Quins continued to attack and a fine run by Mbu was stopped just short of the line. The forwards were dominating the play and a series of picks and drives might have been finished over the try line had the scrum-half, Duncan James, not hesitated and been caught in possession by a suspiciously offside flanker. The resulting penalty allowed Gloucester to clear. And they began to mount a series of attacks with a certain try only prevented when Molitika intercepted the final scoring pass virtually on the line. All Gloucester had to show for their efforts was 3 points from a penalty in front of the posts kicked by Teague as the half-hour approached.
Then with half-time rapidly approaching, another Gloucester attack foundered as the ball was knocked forward deep in the Quins’ half. The ball came out of a melee of players for Gavin Duffy to pick up and run fully 75 yards to score. Dunne converted. 3 – 17.
Then only a moment or two after the restart an attempted long clearance was run back with the ball moved left to find Andy Dunne whose fine run ended over the try line. His conversion kick missed but at half time, with the score at 3 -22, the bonus point had been secured and it was clear that Quins would win.
A penalty after three minutes of the second half gave Dunne the opportunity to practise his kicking and this time he made no mistake as Quins, lead was increased to 3- 25. But Gloucester clearly wanted to show their supporters something and a series of drives by their forwards eventually saw Elloway score. Teague’s kick missed.
Quins continued to attack and a fine run by Henry Barratt was stopped only a metre or two from the line. Then a scrum inside the Gloucester 22-metre line saw Quins drive the home pack backwards over their line only for Rawlings to use his hand to try to prevent the touch down and the penalty try awarded. Dunne duly converted.
Only a couple of minutes later, from a scrum inside the Quins’ half, Tom Guest picked up at the base of the scrum and ran straight through the defence 50 metres to touch down under the posts to leave Dunne another easy conversion to bring the score to 8 – 39.
Now the replacements started to appear and, s so frequently occurs, lost their concentration. Gloucester took advantage and in the next few minutes a series of attacks saw Mbu beat Teague to the touchdown and then Gloucester score two tries through Narroway and Foster. Both were converted and with ten minutes left the gap in the scores had closed to 22 - 39
The response from Quins was immediate and a good attack brought a maul just short of the line and from there Ace Tiatia crossed for the try which Dunne converted. Quins now were playing with some abandon and running the ball from their own in-goal area. Then with only minutes to go, another excellent run by Duffy saw him tackled short of the line but able to offload the ball to Barratt who crossed for the try. The final conversion by Dunne brought the final score to 22 points to 53.
This was another fluent performance with some excellent performances by both forwards and backs. It is almost invidious to pick out individuals, but Reay and Masson played excellently in the centre, the wingers ran well and with some penetration and Duffy had a good game. In the forwards, Hayter and Guest stood out.
Gloucester XV 15. Rory Teague, 14. Dwayne Van Ransburg , 13. Ali James, 12.Mark Foster, 11. Seti Kiole, 10. Ryan Lamb, 9. Nick Runciman, 1. Callum Black, 2. Rob Elloway, 3. Kevin Moran, 4. Jonathan Pendlebury, 5. Tom Skelding,
6. Will Matthews, 7. Tom Rawlings, 8. Luke Narraway
Replacements: 16. Andy Dalgleish, 17. James Tideswell, 18. Steve Pape, 19. Will Jones, 20. Bruce Fenley, 21. Brad Davies, 22. Pete Swatkins.
Scorers:
Tries: Elloway, Narroway, Foster
Conversions: Teague (2)
Penalty: Teague
Harlequins XV: 15. Gavin Duffy, 14. Henry Barratt, 13. Tosh Masson, 12. Andy Reay, 11. Joe Mbu, 10. Andy Dunne, 9. Duncan James, 1. Tom Muggridge, 2. James Hayter, 3. Jon Dawson, 4. James Inglis, 5. George Robson, 6. Maama Molitika, 7. Chris Cracknell, 8. Tom Guest
Replacements: 16. Cameron Dott, 17. Alex Rogers, 18. Karl Rudzki, 19. Ace Tiatia, 20. Steven Jay, 21. Mel Deane, 22. Mike Brown
Scorers:
Tries: Hayter, Molitika, Duffy, Dunne, Guest, Tiatia, Barratt, Penalty
Conversions: Dunne (5)
Penalty: Dunne