Why Glaws need to finish home season with a win
Yoda - leaving
By Cherry Picker
April 21 2010
Gloucester close their Kingsholm season at the weekend against London Irish, and while Bryan Redpath and his team will hopefully be aiming to finish with a win, there will be a number of eyes firmly fixed on next season as the team and individual players try to make sure there isn’t a hat trick of mediocre seasons in 2010-11.
It’s going to be difficult enough to transform two average seasons into achievement of some sort next time, all the more difficult without players of the calibre of Greg Somerville and Gareth Delve.
But both those players have said on announcing their departures for big money in Australia that Gloucester is a special club to play for and the fans deserve a successful team.
Bryan Redpath has had a season in which to get used to being top man, he has Sir Ian McG there to give a helping hand when needed and next season will be his acid test.
Nobody could have expected him to take over from Dean Ryan and produce success immediately, and it’s clear that Gloucester do not have the financial resources for team building that some clubs appear to enjoy.
But Gloucester is a big club and it’s time mediocrity became a thing of the past.
And it’s not just a case of playing out this season against Irish and at relegation-haunted Worcester a fortnight later – these two games must be used as a plat form for next season.
Defeat at Northampton last weekend was a disappointment, and so was Redpath’s decision to highlight the inconsistencies of referees rather than the inconsistencies of his own team.
Glaws didn’t play too badly and there were many positives to take from the game, but they still lost, and that was against a team beaten by Bath just a few days later – a late Olly Barkley penalty the match winner.
It was a win that confirmed Bath’s grip on sixth place – they are now 11 points ahead of Glaws and should earn a Heineken Cup place. Glaws can sneak in by finishing seventh of wasps win the Amlin Cup, so there is something to play for in the final two games as Harlequins are only a point ahead.
Lock Dave Attwood was hopefully speaking on behalf of all the squad when he told the Citizen that winning the last two games is important.
He said: "We feel like we should be a top four side so we need to start proving that by beating the teams that are up there.
"It's important that we get performances and wins in the last two games to keep our heads up going into the off season.
"We'll be smarting because early on in the season we shipped 40 points to Irish so we've got a lot to play for in terms of pride.
"Hopefully we'll have a few players back from injury and we'll get a full house at Kingsholm to start a few fireworks."
Let’s hope he’s right – even if it’s only for the sake of seasons ticket sales for next season.
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Let's hope.
