A Time for Leadership, A Time for Loyalty

By Whaley Shark
December 12 2010

Well, we seem to be reaching one of the defining points of our season. Are we about to write off Europe and ‘concentrate on the Premiership’? The next week will tell us. I passed a pleasant evening with Mrs Whaley (a very good Chinese meal in Manchester, followed by the Hallé), so I heard or saw nothing of yesterday’s game.

But after coming back from France with nothing, we have firmly conceded second place in our group to Brive. We now have to do better against them next Sunday than they did yesterday against us, and that means nothing less than a bonus point win, denying them even a losing point. Lose and we’ve had it; give them a losing bonus and we’ve almost certainly had it; win without a 4-try bonus and it’ll all come down to who massacres the Spanish and Italian innocents most ruthlessly in January. So there’s a job to do next weekend- do it right and we retake control of our group and our destiny. 

Reading the reports and comments on yesterday, it sounds like, although we tried to play with the ball in hand, we misfired badly, gave Brive a couple of soft tries and that was that.  OK, we have a good few injuries, we’ve just got the internationals back, and we could well be rusty. But none of that matters now, Mike- you need to pick the players up, instil some belief and get a team together for next Sunday. If you have the senior players on your side, so much the better, they can help and your job will be easier, but ultimately we are about to find out something about what our Head Coach is really made of.

And for us, the fans, well, we are where we are. Mike Brewer is the Head Coach, and the squad is the squad. None of that is going to change in the short term, so there’s no point in navel gazing about how things could have been different, or how they should change in the future. They aren’t different, and they aren’t going to change over the next few weeks, so we may as well turn up on Sunday, freeze for a couple of hours and yell until we are hoarse. If we are looking for unity and purpose in the squad, we surely have to show a bit of the same…..

So, see you on Sunday.