Christmas comes early for the Diamond Geezers

By OxonRob
February 24 2004

Sometimes you find it all goes wrong. Today was one of those days. London Irish A allowed themselves to be beaten by a good but beatable Harlequins A side, and I miserably failed to note the names of several scorers or to understand all of the (duplicated) names on the team sheet.

I mean, just how many James Campbells do we have?

It all started so well, too. Pleasant banter in the bar beforehand with some Team Dads, and then a first-half seat adjacent to the knowledgeable Quins scribe, Alanquin, who knew all the names, and even claimed to understand referee Mr Geraint Ashton Jones’s semaphore code – which I, patently, did not. Alan’s report will be accurate!

The story of the match as a whole can be summarised thus. First they’d attack and get turned over, and then we’d attack and get turned over. By way of a change both sides occasionally elected to knock on instead.

The game started out with a comparison of handbags on halfway. Adrian Flavin and Luke Sherriff had got to necking in the middle of the park, but the referee delivered a lecture rather than a card, and a penalty to LI, which we banged into touch, getting nowhere from the line out.

Following a break by Paddy Gill, London Irish were awarded another penalty, but in front and in range, which Ross Laidlaw kicked. 3-0. Within moments Quins got their equivalent award, converted by Taumalolo, their more than useful fly half. 3-3. The centre-field ruck following our kick-off put the ball in the paws of Big Phil Murphy, who strode up the middle of the park festooned with Harlequin admirers. The ball came back to Topsy Ojo, who was floored, or should I say felled by a slightly high tackle, one of several being dealt out by both sides as the game settled down.

At this early stage the turnovers seemed to be going the Exiles way, as were the territory occupation stakes. However, the Quins looked hard and fast when they did manage to get ball, and one had the feeling that we’d not be safe until full time, no matter whether we built a 30 point lead. Prophetic words.

This evening we discovered the Garryowen, or, as Eddie Waring would have said, the “oop and under”. No matter who received the ball, up it went with one of two results. Either we got there at the same time as the opposition and knocked on, or we managed to find Tom Williams, the stylish Quins full back, who always seemed to find a way of making us pay for our rashness.

Provided that Laidlaw was kicking we generally found good touches. When he wasn’t we didn’t. Taumalolo, however, seemed to get almost 100% of the kickable Quins ball, and magically pulled our defence out of position before banging the ball down where we didn’t want it.

You will gather that by now play was veering from one end to the other, much of it resembling sparrows milling in spring. One was conscious of many bodies, but not of individual birds – apart from the Quins 7, 8 and 4 (Sherriff, Tom Guest and Tom Parker) who were showing up doing hard running with alarming frequency. To be fair, Greenstock and Cannon were doing something similar at the other end. Sadly, we did not see too many of those wonderful looping runs that we have become used to, however, although we did see a lot of miss moves, none of which proved productive.

Taumalolo now missed goal with a drop kick, but succeeded with a penalty. 3-6. The score was, frankly, against the run of play, but the warning signs were clearly visible. If the Quins forwards were slightly inept in their handling at times, their threes were anything but.

We then managed to knock on our own kick-off!

I was now becoming conscious that while our man Murphy was putting in one or two trademark runs, he looked most uncomfortably slow the rest of the time, and I have the impression that he is not yet fully mended.

Another Laidlaw penalty made the scores 6-6, only three minutes before an absolute cracker of a try by Quins. Williams 15 took the ball up the middle seemingly fighting off three or four tackles before offloading to Tom Allen 13, who got well into the 22, before handing on to wing Matt Moore, who was taken down by Ojo. Somehow Parker 4 was on hand to scoop up the ball from the touchline and dive over. A great try, if alarming for the LI defence. I now learned that Williams and Allen play for England Under-21. Taumalolo missed the conversion. 6-11.

Both defences now seemed to be stiffening, and they needed to. Ed Thrower was stopped after a good run up left touch, and then Irish were awarded a penalty just inside the Quins half. Laidlaw kicked it, cool as a cucumber. 9-11.

Murphy hurled himself into the air to collar the kick-off but knocked on. Irish then turned over the scrum, and Thorpe made yet another good break, taken on by Andy O’Brien, and an over-exuberant Paddy Gill tap-danced on the back of a recumbent Quins forward to the audible dismay of visitors in the stand. Mr Ashton Jones, well on hand, was unmoved.

Ojo took a heavy knock after fielding a high cross from Quins, and then belting away at high speed straight across the field, ultimately into traffic.

Flavin’s throwing arm had been off colour all evening, surprising when considering his record in that department. He now managed to throw directly to the Quins 5, Miall, jumping at 6. Happily we turned over the resulting break-out, and Laidlaw made a long relieving touch.

A feature of the closing minutes was our susceptibility to running into tackles, while Quins made the ball work for them, and seemed to go around or at least past their man through well-timed passes. Classy. Half time was a relief all round.

David Paice replaced Flavin, and Burke came on for Kennedy at half time.

The second half started badly for me, stranded in Fitzy’s, awaiting food. Happily a friend came in to tell me that we’d scored, but when I returned to a seat no-one could tell me who had done so. Our unconverted try gave us the lead 14-11.

Seemingly moments later Chris Cracknell, the Quins 6, made a storming break up his left touchline and into our 22. He was on his own, however, and either Gill or Thorpe made a great saving tackle and managed to flick the ball to Ojo who found touch. (I warned you this report would be rubbish!)

Murphy now came off, presumably replaced by Hoad. I find replacements hard to track. We definitely need a new reporter.

A penalty in front of the posts saw Quins draw level, again. 14-14.

Now it was our turn to respond to a score. Luff and Ojo combined up the left before the ball came across the pitch to right of the posts where Paice took it up and scored a good try, converted by Laidlaw. 21-14.

Quins now started to do some serious attacking, with their 12 Henry Barratt to the fore. One Quins penalty in front of the LI posts was run. Seconds later a further penalty under the posts was run. The Irish defence having by now been well and truly sucked in, Quins had a huge overlap to the right which they duly turned to points, unconverted. 21-19. No, don’t ask who scored.

Whitworth now came on for Laidlaw, who had had a good game. Nonetheless it seemed that our line was now coming up faster in defence, and Whitworth seemed intent on making breaks.

It was now Thrower’s turn to make an uncharacteristic blunder, when he fielded a long kick to near the try line as safely as usual, and then took half an hour to prepare to find touch. He found a Quin instead, and got a nice white in-off into touch behind himself.

This was becoming a game of ping pong, let alone billiards, as it was now our turn to attack left through Whitworth and Ojo. A ruck saw further leftwards progress, before our new number 10 decided to cross kick. It seemed to sail backwards, where it fell to Kevin Burke, and went through two more pairs of hands before arriving with Paice who scored. Whitworth converted. 28-19. My headline for this report looked easy – “Paice in our time.”

We now took a great deal of trouble to fall apart at the seams.

A Quins kick ahead was knocked on by an LI player I shan’t name inside our 25. Despite aggressive defence by LI there was literally nothing to stop Quins 19, Ben Willis, from dotting down on the left, following the scrum and several phases.

We were now starting to look ragged all round and nothing we did seemed to help. Loose ball from a line out bounced off Gill’s knees. Unusual.

Following a gadzillion number of phases, sucking in our defence, a Quins cross kick to the right found few at home to defend against three or four try-hungry backs. 28-29, since the conversion was missed – not once but twice as a result of an early charge-down attempt.

Quins were now well on top, although the reason for this change in their fortunes was difficult to spot. We were now playing catch-up with ten minutes to go, and Quins were producing overlap after overlap and thankfully wasting them. Our tackling was good, but Taumalolo’s line kicking was better.

He kept us at bay with some help from a long-lasting rolling maul and some LI butterfingers. We cannot always rely on long-range Thrower drop kicks when we play catch-up rugby. Still, we got two bonus points, which is not all bad.