Premiership November - Gloucester Preview

By BrianC
November 8 2006

We continue ‘Premiership November’ with our first ever Friday night Premiership game at the Madejski. Reports of jams on the M4, caused by slow moving agricultural vehicles, are already reaching us. Gloucester are coming to town.

Their victory over Saracens last weekend brought the West Country boys to the top of the table. With Bristol going down at Newcastle they remain the only undefeated team in the country. They will indeed be formidable opposition.

Last season we played Gloucester three times. In the league we achieved a memorable double beating them 25 - 10 at the Madejski in November and 9 - 13 in January at Kingsholm. Unusually for a poll on this site ‘The Pack’ were voted MOTM in the latter game. Our last game of the 2005/6 season was also against Gloucester, in the ECC final at The Stoop. That was a nail biting game which we lost 36 - 34 after extra time.

Gloucester have hit the ground running this season. Five victories and one draw, away at Leicester, stand as testament to the side that Dean Ryan has put together. He was deservedly awarded GP Coach of the Month for October. Despite the current success he describes the current side as ‘work in progress’. They are still a fairly young side with a lightning fast back row. This relative inexperience is balanced by some wise heads notably James Simpson-Daniel and French Stalwarts Olivier Azam and Ludovic Mercier.

Injuries are a major concern for both teams. We are missing so many from our pack that I would say it is very unlikely they will pick up a MOTM this Friday. I was personally very pleased to see Big Bob back on the field last weekend. To me his on field leadership has been missed in recent weeks. Gloucester’s wounded include James Forrester who has recently had a knee cartilage operation.

Last season it was in the month of November that we started to see things come together for us. We picked up thirteen points from the four games. Last weekends victory at the Rec has given us a good start to this. Something however tells me that we’ll need to step up our game a notch or two from that game to come out victors in this.