MATCH PREVIEW: NORTHAMPTON v WASPS

Here we go
By Dobbin
March 25 2010

It's that time of year once again: the annual, giddy ascent into spring, the wheeling of the lawnmower out of its winter confinement, the staring in disbelief at the latest quarterly gas bill...the end, finally, of the Six Nations.Meanwhile, the club season can roll sedately towards its close, at last unhindered by international call-ups, training camps and rest days.

We should cherish this part of the season. The grounds are getting harder, the air is getting warmer, the days are getting longer...and Wasps are still doing the Guinness Premiership Hokey-Cokey: win one, lose one, ra ra ra.

Our opponents this weekend are Northampton, who have been doing rather more winning than losing this season. Not for them three losses (and counting) to the team(s) at the bottom of the league table. Last Sunday they won LV Cup Final with a fine victory over Gloucester in a highly entertaining final. They lie second in the Guinness Premiership and have a Heineken Cup quarter-final against Munster coming up. One piece of silverware down, and plenty more to play for.

Wasps fans travelling up to Franklin's Gardens this Saturday will be doing so more in hope than in expectation. Our record there is average, at best – in the eleven meetings since Wasps won the title there in 1997, Saints have won seven times. Not quite as bad as Saints' record at Adams Park, but nothing to write home about, either. Since a good few of those Northampton wins came during our run of Premiership titles, it would be a brave man who travels up the M1 this weekend with expectations of triumph, given both teams' respective recent performances.

Two days before Saints defeated Gloucester in the LV Cup Final, Wasps travelled to Sale and (almost predictably) lost. Tony Hanks claimed that Wasps played all the rugby, Kingsley Jones claimed that Sale had got Wasps sussed. More independent spectators might have observed that pretty passing moves and flowing phase play is no substitute for a solid set-piece when you've got a Manchester rain-storm above you and conditions from the Somme underfoot. Once again simple wet-weather tactics were our undoing, and once again the fruits of a home win against tough opposition were squandered in a game we should really have put away.

Perhaps it's better that this week we face a club above us rather than below us. But then again, perhaps not. Northampton have become a formidable team in the short time since they were promoted back from ND1 at the beginning of last season. Coaches Jim Mallinder and Dorian West have got them playing a brand of rugby that is attack-minded, fluent, entertaining and, as Gloucester will testify, bloomin' effective. Intelligent signings from a multitude of sources have been melded into a team that is more than the sum of its parts (or perhaps not, perhaps Mallinder and West have simply allowed these players to realise their potential). Roger Wilson and Neil Best from Ulster. Ben Foden from Sale. Chris Ashton and Stephen Myler from rugby league. Juandre Kruger from South Africa. Soane Tonga'uiha from Tonga, via Bedford. Shane Geraghty from London Irish. Phil Dowson from Newcastle. Added to this are home-grown talents like big Courtney Lawes and...erm...little Paul Diggin. Not forgetting Bruce Reihana, who hails from the Waikato but has become part of the furniture at Saints since he joined them in 2002.

It is to Mallinder's and West's credit that they have got this disparate assortment of voices all singing from the same hymn-sheet. They're not doing Baa-Baa Black Sheep, either. This lot are knocking out Handel oratorios. A hard edge up front, dynamic runners behind, the controlling influence of Myler at fly-half (or the more off-the-cuff Geraghty, if preferred), and everybody adept at the offload (or so it seemed in passages of play last week). In Ashton they have the most effective finisher in the Premiership, in Foden probably its most effective broken field runner. I think it's fair to say that Wasps are facing the most complete team in the league this week. A mixture, perhaps, of West's Leicester and Mallinder's Sale.

And what of Wasps? Predictably, given our shortage in the second row, England have sent Simon Shaw back to us broken, and we will be without his services for a number of weeks. There is no word, as I write, on George Skivington's fitness. The returns of Joe Worsley and Tim Payne bolster the pack but our lineout (and scrum) remain a concern while three specialist locks are out. Our options at ten mirror those of Northampton, the control of Dave Walder against the attacking flair of Danny Cipriani. At scrum-half, there is talk that Joe Simpson might be fit, and we could certainly do with his eye for the gap and acceleration against a team with the second best defensive record in the league. In the centre perm any two from Kefu, Jacobs and Waldouck, although I think you have to accommodate Waldouck's good balance of defence and attack somewhere in the starting line-up. Mark van Gisbergen picks himself at full-back (notwithstanding his apparent travails in the Edgeley Park rain last week) and on the wing it's again any two from three: Lemi, Sackey and Varndell.

The visit to Franklin's Garden's is always a tough one. They haven't lost there for God knows how long (I'm sure an East Midlands statto will be along to tell us). This year they look like being an even tougher prospect than usual. Of Wasps' five remaining Guinness Premiership fixtures, you have to think that this is one the coaches haven't targeted as a must-win. Given how the season's gone, that might just be our secret weapon.

Prediction: pessimism or realism, I'm not sure, but I'd be happy with a bonus point!

MATCH PREVIEW: NORTHAMPTON v WASPS

Posted by: DrunkenWasps.com (IP Logged)

Date: 25/03/2010 09:01

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