Wayne's World

Pre-Match Thoughts
I suspect that a fair few LI supporters, like me, have a bit of soft spot for the Warriors. Their old owner Cecil Duckworth seemed more of a ‘gentleman farmer’ than some of the more hard-nosed guys like Tom Walkinshaw or Brian Kennedy, they have developed Sixways into a fantastic facility and their supporters always seem a genuinely friendly bunch. Even their bizarre 2013 ‘Warrior Chant’ Video featured a re-mix of Uncle Cecil, an assortment of Garden Gnomes, Choirboys and a ‘Pied Piper’ procession through Worcester High Street...

Truth be told, they were also pretty friendly on the pitch, getting relegated on two occasions and often contriving to lose healthy leads that must have made their long-suffering fans despair.

So I was really happy when they came back from the dead to beat Bristol in last season’s 2-legged play-off, with Flakemeister Lamby coolly slotting the winning conversion in overtime amid much delirium. Even notorious hard-nut Dean Ryan was reduced to tears of joy…

Worcester’s luck truly seemed to have changed, and when Tom Heathcote also slotted a drop-goal in overtime to beat Saints in the opening match of this season, they were up and running, and soon grabbed a 10 pt advantage over LI in the AP table.

Recent events however have seen them slip back into their old ways, blowing large leads against Tigers and Wasps, and with an uptick in LI’s fortunes at home, going into Sunday’s match we were only 4pts behind them.
If only we could win, we would definitely drag them into the relegation swamp with us and Falcons…

The Match
The day dawned sunny and blustery, and we had an early 1pm kick-off due the Wales v Ireland 6N clash later in the day.

Irish had good pressure in the first 10 mins, but Shane missed a regulation 3pts from an early penalty. We continued to dominate the early play, hammering away at their line on several occasions only for a lack of composure and poor decision making turning the ball over when it seemed easier to score.

But we were busting holes through the middle of the Wuss midfield defence seemingly at will, Ciaran Hearn being notable for some bulldozing runs, and it was no real surprise to see a clear policy to run hard and straight at Lamby, who was a late call-up for Wuss in place of Heathcote. Eventually on the quarter hour Ciaran made a superb chip-kick ahead from the Wuss 10m line, and showed a surprising degree of acceleration for such a ‘big unit’ to collect his own kick, and he surged ahead under the posts for a lovely individual try, and Shane scooped up the extra 2pts.

Ryan Mills then kicked a good pen from 40m to make it 7-3, but it was still mostly Irish after that, and after the Wuss 14 Bruce Heem was sent to the sin-bin, Shane slotted a pen for 3. We then had a fantastic rolling maul that was gathering pace towards their try-line, when Scotty Steele inexplicably chose to feed the backs and good Wuss defence out wide snuffed out the chance.

To be truthful, Wuss played well with 1 man down, and the first half ended 10-3 to LI – no doubt TC was as frustrated as the LI faithful that we only had a 7pt lead.

The 2nd half opened with Andy Symons on for Lamby, and he must have worried his alleged new paymasters at LI next season with an inexplicably dismal kicking display in the second half that at the end of the day was the difference between the teams.

After only a few mins came the main point of controversy in the match. Tiks, in truth his only meaningful contribution to the afternoon’s activities, surged forward in a run from halfway, and when he was caught on the Wuss 22, some beautiful handling and passing sent Topsy on the right wing to skip past his man, acknowledge the ecstatic LI Drumming Corps, and dot down. However, Wayne Barnes and the TMO then absurdly disallowed what 99.99% of the crowd considered perfectly good try for Topsy on his 250th LI game.

Inevitably, after such a gutting decision going against us, Wuss then proceeded to score a good try soon afterwards in the SouthWest corner, but with no conversion from Symons, LI held a slim lead at 10-8.
After some further incessant LI pressure on the Wuss line, including YC for Donncha O’Callaghan, LI finally broke through with Shane feeding a lovely inside pass to Fenners, who galloped over the line under the posts, and Shane added the extras for 17-8.

With 10 mins to go Wuss ensured that this was to be yet another ending of exquisite torture for the Madstad faithful, when they scored a try off a driving maul, but Symons missed yet another kick to keep the score at 17-13.
Shane settled a few nerves with a penalty from 30m, to make it 20-13, but a draw was still possible for Wuss, and the last 7 mins were generally spent in a frantic game of ‘Keystone-Cops’ with each side determined to give their supporters kittens by offering up various turnovers, knock-ons and generally manic play.

With blessed relief did Wayne finally blow for time, after Wuss had made one knock-on too many, and Darren hoofed the ball safely into touch....

Ref-Watch – Wayne Barnes
Having been given JP for the Falcons game, we were allotted an even more senior whistler in Wayne for this game – presumably Jerome Garces and then Sir Nigel await us for the return ‘relegation deciders’ at Sixways and Kingston Park…?

But never did I think I would see the day when I would have welcomed back Ian ‘The Damage’ Ramage back to the Madstad with open and apologetic arms - but today was indeed the day.

It wasn’t that Wayne was biased against us – he made enough idiotic decisions against Wuss for that to be clear. But is it too much to ask that a ref applies the laws correctly? But knock-ons and ‘not straights’ were in abundance, and all 3 YC’s were mired in mystery – if both Paicey and O’Callaghan had committed bad penalties with the oppo’s maul steaming towards the line why wasn’t a penalty try awarded...?

But of course Wayne’s show-stopper was the disallowed Topsy try. I saw 5 main problems with this:

1. The alleged blocking by Jebb on their lock was so minor an ‘infringement that it was not sufficiently bad to disallow the try ie. Barnes and his TMO Muppet showed no ‘feel’ for the game.
2. It wasn’t blocking anyway – Jebb was entitled to stand where he was.
3. The Wuss lock actually held Jebb back himself.
4. The Wuss lock would never have got to Tiks anyway
5. The ‘offence’ was too far back in the move

There are probably more…

Player-watch – Ciaran Hearn
I thought that it was a toss-up between Rob McCusker and Ciaran Hearn for MOTM, and most around me were similarly surprised when Paicey was announced.

Even before his sublimely skilful try, Ciaran had looked good – he reminds me of Eamonn Sheridan, but with considerably more gas and much better ball skills. He consistently made damaging holes in the Wuss midfield, giving their Ryans, Lamby and Mills, a particularly torrid time. His defence with Fergus was also top quality, and he was often switched to the left wing where he made some superb catches of some high bombs in a swirling wind.

He and Johnny Williams look to be a really top notch centre combo, and hopefully they will be played together more often...

Looking Ahead?
So, thankfully we chisel out an absolutely crucial win and are now level on points with Falcons, with Wuss 1 pt ahead.
We are now 50% through the season, and looking at our ‘form-line’, it is the best of the teams at the bottom.

But with all the injured, we now have a very depleted squad, and it is vital that we have no more training/training ground injuries. Matt Symons in particular, who had a magnificent game, looked absolutely shattered at the end, and a week of rest and recuperation at Hazelwood in the lead up to the visit to Northampton is now surely needed, rather than any contact training…

We were robbed at the death of a win last season at The Gardens by the ‘try that wasn’t’, and stranger things have happened than a LI double over the Saints, haven’t they…?