Pre-season: London Irish vs Nottingham Rugby

With recent weather I was looking-forward to a balmy summer's evening watching Irish play Nottigham at Hazelwood. Sadly the weather turned on Friday and the shirt-sleeve weather I was expecting became a chilly, breezy evening - something of a disappointment. It was the only one, though.

I think the last pre-season I'd seen was the match against Bristol at Hazelwood a couple of seasons ago. We won that one 27 - 26 in a match that showed us to be not quite as good as we'd hoped. Bristol managed to make us look just about Championship standard that night and I have to say I was a little worried going into this fixture that, given our fall from the top-flight, we'd have regressed and this would be a tight affair. The result, of course, probably didn't matter. This was a test of where we stand against a goodish Championship team. The win at Quins was great - winning at Quins always is - but the worry was that they weren't taking it seriously. This would be our litmus test for the coming-season.

As it turns out my worries were completely unfounded. Nottingham look to be a competent team with a couple of pretty handy players but they were proved second-best in pretty-much every aspect of the game. The possible exception to this being the lineout - a bit odd given our incumbent coach, perhaps Kendo is a bit busy with other things to pass-on his lineout prowess.

I won't do a blow-by-blow for a couple of reasons. Firstly I wasn't taking notes, secondly I didn't fight my way to a viewpoint where I could actually see all the game - excellent to see a good turn-out for the game but it made a good view difficult unless you wanted to battle your way to the front. Thirdly I spent a great deal of time just chatting to folks - good company all - and having a nice time. There's a perfectly good write-up on the offy and I don't disagree with any of it so if you need more have a look at that. For the record full-time score was 43 - 14.

Irish scored 7 tries, the best of which to my mind was the 4th by Johnny Williams, continuing from his greatness last season, hitting a peach of a line 10m out to cut Nottingham wide-open and score under the posts. Greig Tonks will have thanked him for that as it made the conversion easier. Tonks struggled to kick a good few of the conversions - almost all from within a metre of the touchlines on a blustery night. Nothing to worry about, so long as we're scoring a lot of tries.

One small worry was that, like Quins last week, Nottingham managed to put 2 tries past us. In a tight league we really do need to nail our goal-line shut. There are plenty of teams in the Championship who can cut loose if you give them space and these two were somewhat reminiscent of our defence last season - people standing off and missing tackles. Tightening this up would make for a much less tense season for me and give us a platform to build-on if we succeed in our goal of promotion back to the Prem.

You did have to feel sorry for the Nottingham front-row who after struggling for most of the first-half with Tom Court and Ollie Hoskins saw that pair retreat to replaced by Danny Hobbs-Awoyemi and (to give him his full name) Twice World Cup Winner Ben Franks! Irish scrum dominance was unchanged by the substitution.

The introduction of David Paice for Gerard Ellis shored the lineout up, with David hitting a lot more of his targets. Ellis was great everywhere else but his throwing-in was a tad suspect. The rest of the substitutions made less of a difference. It was good to see that we have replacements that can come-on and either improve or at least hold our form.

So, a good night, both on and off the field. The slight chill compared to recent (and indeed subsequent) evenings did little to dampen Irish supporters' enjoyment, the players did their best to calm any fears we might have and the club put on a good event. If you're at a loose-end on Friday then I'd recommend it as an evening out. I'm not sure if so many of the first-choice players will be on-show for the Loughborough Students game - no disrespect to them but we aren't likely to risk our big-guns with a week before the start of term.