An Early Christmas
By Shawshank
November 23 2020
It would be easy to think that Christmas came early for Saturday’s encounter for LI at Sixways, when both sides generously presented the other with several gift-wrapped chances to win a tight game in the last 20 mins. Irish finally delivered a Secret Santa in the shape of Billy Meakes’ brain-fart of a kick ahead to no-one in ‘added-time’, when we clearly needed to patiently keep hold of the ball and try to work our way towards the Worcester line.
The general level of anguish of long-suffering Irish supporters watching at home was summed up at the ground nicely by Sean O’Brien, overheard on the ref-mike hollering out to Meakes, “Why the f*** did you do that?”. Indeed.
Two minutes earlier Worcester had committed their own attempted hari-kari by their fly-half Billy Searle kicking ‘dead’ an easy penalty punt - his second such infraction of the afternoon – that allowed LI a scrum back on half-way. TV showed the Worcester coach Alan Solomons self-combusting up in his gantry.
In truth, LI should never have had a chance to win the game at the end, so dominant were Worcester in the first-half. They won scrum penalties at will, poor Harry Elrington being taken to the cleaners by their tight-head Nick Schonert, so that Worcester had complete dominance of territory and possession. Several clean line-breaks from them should have resulted in at least a couple of tries, but magnificent LI ‘scrambling’ defence just about managed to hold them out, and combined with Searle’s inept kicking from hand and tee, meant that Wuss did not pull clear.
Matters were so bad at scrum-time that both Harry and Sione Kepu had been yanked off the pitch after 35 mins, although Kepu also looked injured.
The score line of 3-3 at half time was scarcely believable - could LI ride their luck and play better in the second half?
In truth we did, getting parity in the scrum and consequently possession. However, we frequently turned over the ball by dreadful handling – a tally 13 knock-ons for the day was inexplicable, as it was a nice dry day on a plastic pitch. However, on about 60 mins we finally kept hold of it through a lovely set of about 20 phases, culminating in sub Nick Phipps (playing his best game for us since joining) burrowing over for a converted try to take the lead 6-10.
However, yet another horrendous knock-on from Ben Loader straight from the re-start gave back possession immediately, and from the resulting scrum Worcester scored in the corner to take the lead 11-10.
We still had a chance to potentially nick the game with about 5 mins left, but Paddy Jackson, from 43m out in front of the posts, goobered the ball sky-wards so badly that it didn’t even reach the uprights. It was that sort of day.
Positives? At least we got a LBP, and are not bottom of the table. Other good signs were Meakes’ nice running with the ball, our maul defence looked much improved with Andrei Mahu having a strong debut. An excellent scrambling cover-defence showed that team spirit must be good.
You just have a sinking feeling however that it’s going to be another long, hard slog…
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And sorry SteveS...
