Could this be the start……..

Griff asked for stories to keep the site alive and Ginger Pirate stepped-up with their view of the current state of the Irish team. It should be noted that GP wrote this a couple of weeks ago before the Newcastle game so some of the speculation can now be judged (to GP's credit I would say).

Irish could be 25 points up with 15 mins to go and I still wouldn’t be confident of a win, so making predictions in any sport is a mugs game but maybe even more so for Irish at the moment. However, if one cannot occasionally daydream what’s the point.

Could this be the start of a mid-season surge? There are some encouaring signs to suggest it might be, we now have the monkey of not winning in front of the crowd at Brentford off our back, in the last 6 games we have 4 wins, 1 loss and 1 draw including wins away to the last seasons finalist and a draw against Sarries, so that must give us the confidence to know that we can beat anyone on our day. Ed Note: at time of publishing it's 5 wins, 1 draw

The team is looking settled, with a strong front 5, the back row is looking more balanced, with the addition of Cracknall and the emergence of Pearson who is an exciting prospect. Our scrum half combo must be one of the strongest in the league and Jackson rarely has an off day. I am loving our centre partnership at the moment (they can go up the guts of a team or can play it wide) and whilst he has yet to play many games BVR appears to be another wise hire.

Personally, I don’t feel like our back three has lit the league on fire like they did last season but they have the potential and capability to do so and I think the addition of Rowe will only strengthen the unit.
Looking at the league table, its clear that our attack is better than our defence but from the games I have seen, the defence issues lie more in the system rather than in the heart, so quietly confident that we can improve that area of the game.

Additional reasons to be positive, we have two Argentinian internationals about to join our ranks, we have lowered the amount of intercept passes we give away and the injury profile of the teams is manageable at the moment (fully appreciate the last two points could change at any moment).

So, looking ahead and focusing on just the next 4 Premiership games, we have:

1. Newcastle at home, they will be a tough team to beat whilst they don’t score much they have one of the best defenses in the league and with Radwan they have a player than can score from anywhere. Having lost to Bristol at home just after beating Exeter away, we really need this result to starting building consistency which we find so elusive to find.

2. Wasps away, we beat them away from last season and it appears that they still have a significant injury profile, so whilst it will be a challenge, there is no doubt we have a shot.

3. Bath at home, they nearly beat Exeter the other week, so they have a performance in them but December will be a hard month for them as they are playing Northampton (A), Leinster (H), la Rochelle (H), Gloucester (H), Exeter (H). That is a hard run of games and hopefully we can catch them on their final legs !

4. Exeter at home, this will be a hard one as they will be very sore from our victory at Sandy Park, however they will be missing their English contingent as it’s a week before the 6 nations, so they wont be a full strength so who knows.

Even with my green tinted glasses, I cant see why we could not get two if not three wins from those games, add in a few bonus points and that would cement our place in midtable and would be a good launch pad to go higher.

Exciting times !