London Welsh Preview

London Welsh

V

Titans

National Division 1

3rd December 2005

Old Deer Park

Kick Off 2.00pm

Andre Bester continues his squad rotation policy again this weekend as he makes six changes to the starting 15 that played against Moseley last Friday evening.

Greg Mitchell and WP Strauss return in the backs, Golding, Hanna and Rawson complete the front row and Chris Hala’ufia returns from International duty at number 8.

Morne Jonker has been re-called back from Nuneaton as scrum half cover, as Joe Bedford is starting on the bench for Saracens this weekend. Dave Strettle is away on England 7’s duty and will be available for the Otley away game just after Christmas.

Bester explained his reasoning for the rotation policy when he said, “We want to make sure everybody gets game time and that everybody is developing and that we don’t isolate players.

“In addition if I only use 15 players and we get some injuries, the players coming in wont have had any game time and will not be sufficiently prepared. We don’t want to develop just a few; we want to develop a large squad so that when Premiership rugby comes around we’ll be in a good position.”

Looking ahead to the weekend’s game Bester said, “London Welsh are a much better team than their league position suggests and it will be very tough, they’ll take inspiration from trying to get off the bottom of the league. They’ll be desperate to win this game!

“We are on a roll results wise but not performance wise, but that’s the mark of a good side when you aren’t playing well but you are still wining rugby matches. We are always very respectful of our opponents and that’s been the case this week with our preparation. We will travel to London and give them the respect they deserve.

“I’m always confident about our own abilities, but that has to be applied in every match we play. There’s a very fine line between confidence and complacency.”

Earth Titans: 15 Mike Whitehead, 14 John Holtby, 13 Greg Mitchell, 12 Lee Blackett, 11 Errie Claassens, 10 WP Strauss, 9 Michael Kirkwood, 1 Jon Golding, 2 Neil Hanna, 3 John Rawson, 4 Jannie Bornman, 5 Gareth McComb, 6 Hendre Fourie, 7 Neil Cochrane, 8 Chris Hala’Ufia

Replacements

16 Morne Jonker, 17 Anthony Carter, 18 Jarleth Carey, 19 Nigel Conroy, 20 Adam Hopcroft, 21 Louie McGowan 22 Scott Donald.

London Welsh team to be announced later.

Rotherham are looking to maintain fifth spot in the league as they prepare for their visit to London Welsh on Saturday. If Plymouth slips up at Sedgley Park and Rotherham takes the full five points, then they’ll move up into fourth and who would have imagined that at the beginning of the campaign!

In league history the two teams have met on ten occasions with Roth holding a healthy 9-1 advantage. You have to trawl back to September 1999 to find Welsh’s only victory over Rotherham. But having said that, Welsh on their own patch have always proved difficult opposition and Roth will need to be switched on.

Coming into the game Rotherham are the form side having suffered only two defeats in their last nine outings. Although not playing their best rugby at the moment Rotherham are developing into a tight unit that’s proving difficult to beat.

Whereas London Welsh have recorded only one league victory all season, that being against the Bees back in September. However Welsh’s home form is not too bad and they haven’t been disgraced at Old Deer Park this season.

Welsh’s confidence received a boost with last weeks 39-30 victory over Coventry in the National Trophy and a possible danger man for them could be winger Tim Holgate, who has five tries already this season for a struggling team.

Realistically though, Rotherham will be looking to return from the Capital with a minimum of four points and hopefully a good performance with the bonus point thrown in.

Roth Admin Prediction: Roth by 14

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