An Eds Diary - 28th October 2003

By BrianC
July 30 2004

We beat Rotherham at the Madejski in a very bizzare game. The standard of refereeing, never the best aspect of our game, is worse than normal.

An Ed’s Diary – 28th October 2003

London Irish 47 – 26 Rotherham. What a bizarre game. We scored three tries and were comfortably ahead after 15 minutes. Then we appeared to get over confident and let them back into the game. Our previously mean defence shipped two tries and, as with last weeks Wasps game, our discipline was poor. Having led 24 – 7 at one stage we found ourselves 24 – 26 down early in the second half.

I don’t know what Gary Gold said at half time but it seems to have done the trick. All told we shouldn’t complain too much. Before the game the bookies had us down to win by 22 points, we did so by 21 and pocketed our first try bonus of the season. With seven games gone, we are now 5th in the ZP. What impact returning RWC players will have on the rest of the season I don’t know. Suffice it to say that for now we appear to have a reasonable shot at a HC place this season.

Again the refereeing was generally agreed to be dire, this time the culprit was Goodliffe who would normally be refereeing ND1 games were it not for the World Cup.

Sundays RWC games were riveting and tense. Ireland beat Argentina 16 – 15 in a game that will long be remembered, not so much for it’s quality rather for the tension. Later in the day England ran out 35 – 21 victors over Western Samoa. As is often the case the scoreline does not tell the story of the game. Samoa went 10 – 0 up after 15 minutes and went in at half time 16 – 13 ahead. With 10 minutes to go there was only one point in it, the game could have gone either way. Full credit to the Samoans for putting up such a fight and to England for having the resolve to deal with it. I doubt if any of the other home nations would have been able to do so.

This weeks game is away at Sale, it’s also the first time this season that a match of ours will be televised. I’m going to be in Belfast so have arranged for a meeting with the Donaghadee branch which will take in the game at the home of Mr & Mrs M@d. Such is this wonderful extended family that we are all a part of, there are open doors all over the land.