Glos Match Report

So this is the student life. Work hard, inevitably. Discover that studying linguistics ruins any chance of a normal conversation. Be a cheapskate – why watch live TV for 40p a day when you can watch it on catch-up for free? Try hard to find decent rugby commentaries...

To be fair to BBC Radio Gloucester, I don't particularly like our away kit either. But there is no need to rub it in. The Gloucester-themed bias, whilst far from ideal as a Sarries fan, is also understandable.

So on to the story of the game. After 5 minutes there was a chance for Gloucester to get ahead, but it was not to be. In fact, the first score of the game came after 15 minutes, when Mike Ellery went over, and after a little bit of waiting for the referee Mat Carley to do... something (which the Gloucester commentators were a little confused by), the try was awarded. Unfortunately Charlie Hodgson missed with the conversion, although 6 minutes later he redeemed himself with a penalty, and Saracens were 8-0 up. Billy Twelvetrees responded with 2 penalties before Owen Farrell restored a 5-point lead with a penalty just before half-time.

It seemed during the first half that many of the penalties against Sarries were awarded because of poor tackling; the first termed a 'neck roll' by the commentators, the second deemed a shoulder charge. On the other hand, the Saracens defence held solid and did not concede a single try, despite several bouts of pressure from Gloucester.

The second half seemed slightly more even in terms of possession, and the Gloucester crowd (which had been quietened a little by Saracens in the first half) were back in full voice. After 10 minutes, Twelvetrees scored another penalty to bring his, and Gloucester's, points tally to 9, and 10 minutes later Gloucester took the lead for the first time in the match with yet another Twelvetrees penalty. Gloucester then seemed to develop a habit of scoring immediately before conceding a penalty. Despite missing a kick at 64 minutes, Farrell restored the lead just 4 minutes later. However, in a *slightly* tense final 10 minutes, the lead changed twice, Gloucester conceding almost immediately as they caught the ball from the kick-off after their final score. Their final score was a phenomenally long kick from Twelvetrees, which seemed to take an age to go over. Farrell capitalised on the following penalty to bring the score to 15-17, and there it stayed. The last minute seemed a little scrappy, with Saracens losing a line-out before Gloucester getting turned over, but Saracens prevailed and came away with the win.

Points of note:

Particularly in the first half, despite not having the lion's share of the possession, Saracens still made it count when they did get the ball. In the words of the commentators, “One chance, one try.” Another quote, essentially saying the same thing: “When they've got the ball, which they haven't really had this game, they've been really effective”. Gloucester on the other hand had a fair amount of possession and only came away with two penalties near the end of the half.

Scrum feeds generally have not been particularly straight for a long time. Based on the radio commentary, Gloucester fans were incensed when Wigglesworth did not put the ball in straight. Having lost patience with the Premiership Rugby video player (and the **** university wifi), I cannot tell whether the feeds were particularly crooked this week, or just if the very partisan crowd were looking for another reason to penalise Sarries.

It's not only in football stadia that lines don't get properly painted over. During the World Cup, the pitch was slightly narrower than it was today. Thus there were two sets of lines. One of which had not been properly removed. This caused confusion in 2 notable cases during the match, once where it was adjudged that a Gloucester player was in touch, when the crowd thought he wasn't, and another time when a Sarries player was adjudged not to be in touch, when the crowd thought he was.

I have also learned from watching this game that commentators use pretty clichéd language – during most of Twelvetrees' kicks, you 'could hear a pin drop'. It stops being so imaginative and interesting to listen to after a while. Sometimes, for me, it was more interesting to listen to the crowd cheering. Because they pronounced Gloucester, to my ears, slightly strangely. Where most people would probably pronounce it “glɒstə”, they pronounced it “glɒstəɹ”, with an r. I'm sorry. Maybe I should have concentrated on the rugby rather than an inconsequential pronunciation. But I'm a linguistics student. I can't help it.