The Long Long Road to the End of the Season

By BrianC
May 10 2006

Whatever some of us may feel about who the true champions are after twenty two rounds of rugby the fact is that the matter will be decided at Twickenham on Saturday 27th May.

The latest London Irish have ever finished a season was in 2000, the 20^th May. That year the season didn’t start until October due to the Rugby World Cup. With our ECC final on the 21^st this will be our latest ever finish. If we get though our next match we will have a final to play on the 27^th. This has been, by some way, our longest season ever.

Between us and a place in the final is a trip to take on Leicester Tigers at Welford Road. On pretty well every previous occasion I have written a preview of our games at Leicester I have used words such as daunting or tough to describe this fixture. Not today, this London Irish side is the best I have seen. Whilst nobody finds a trip to the East Midlands anything but hard our boys do have the winning of this game in them.

Leicester have managed a double over us this season. Our heaviest defeat of the season was our 35 - 3 thrashing at WR in November. At home we went down 25 - 28 in a game we should have won. They have in fact beaten us in our last six encounters.

This match sees the team with the best home record of the season facing that with the best away record. It also pits together the best two teams on current form (last six matches) with Leicester gaining 26 out of a possible 30 points and London Irish 22.

Leicester’s record at Welford Road is impressive. They have won 25 league games in a row there, last beaten by Gloucester in January 2004.

In normal situations such telling statistics would set Leicester as clear favourites. As anyone who has been following our progress this season will testify this is anything but a normal situation, certainly for LI supporters. Until a couple of weeks ago critics had questioned our ability to defeat the big boys. That is no more the case. It should also be noted that Wasps were defending a long unbeaten home record before Brian Smith’s machine tore them apart.

The bookies have Leicester 7/4 favourites to win this competition and us 5-1 outsiders with Sale and Wasps in between. They will no doubt go into this game as slight favourites. I can’t explain why but I have a good feeling about this. Perhaps it’s just that I don’t really mind. I’m one of those luddites who will consider Sale the champions whatever happens.