The World According to Mr.Pants......

By Veston Pants
March 8 2007

Message board regular Veston Pants has taken some time to write a preview for the forthcoming crunch match vs Sale Sharks at Edgeley Park this Friday. Please note; this was written before team announcements.

Sale Sharks vs Worcester Warriors Friday 9th March 2007

Preview by Veston Pants

 

Worcester Warriors travel north to Stockport this coming Friday evening with high hopes of recording their first ever Premiership win at Edgeley Park buoyed by a season’s first home league win at Sixways.  An away trip to the defending champions might not normally be the type of fixture targeted by the basement club for a potential 4 point return but then this has been a far from normal season for both clubs.

Most people will now be only too aware of the devastation wrought upon Phillipe St Andre’s squad.  The catalogue of injuries affecting the reigning champs is thicker than the new Argos book!  The list of absentees is unprecedented (including Hodgson, White, Fernandez-Lobbe, Faure. Martens, Bonner-Evans and Fernandez-Lobbe) and is further compounded by England duty for Jason Robinson, Mark Cueto and Magnus Lund while the two Sebastiens - Bruno and Chabal - will be donning les chemises bleus of France. Losing a couple of players of this standard would be enough to have many DoRs reaching for the happy tablets but to lose almost his full first XV must have hugely likeable PSA wondering what he did wrong in a previous life.

Not surprisingly Sale have struggled for results in recent weeks with only 3 wins from their last twelve outings and a slump to a (relatively) lowly 8th place in the table. Nevertheless, with players of the pedigree of Andy Titterell, Steve Hanley, Richard Wigglesworth, Chris Bell and the rapidly recovering England prop Andrew Sheridan available for selection it promises to be anything but a canter across the line for the Warriors. In the ebullient Ben Foden Sale possess one of the leading young talents in the domestic game and new signing French international wing/full-back Julien Laharrague adds real strength to the depleted squad.

Worcester seem likely to name a similar side to that which triumphed over Bath last weekend. One real concern will be captain Pat Sanderson’s broken hand that caused him to leave the field in the 21-15 victory. Should Pat fail to make the starting line-up we may be treated to a rare start for the talismanic Gavin Quinnell ‘coming over the hill’ in a revamped back row. In the games against Gloucester and Bath we saw evidence of a real cutting edge in the back play - not least from folk hero Thinus Delport who really appears to be relishing is role at 11.

Prior to the Bath game Warriors Director of Rugby John Brain stated that we may need to win all of our remaining games and, regardless of the opponent’s tribulations, many of us see an away fixture against Sale as one of the two most difficult of these games. However, last weekend’s results were largely favourable for the Warriors and while the task of avoiding relegation still appears to be formidable an upset in Cheshire could coincidentally do wonders for sales of Andrex in Northants.