The Good & The Bad: Quins v London Irish

Well, a draw of all things! Here you go...

GOOD -

1). Points on the board -

Given the way LI have been playing and the team we put out, coupled with their habit of beating us, I'd say a draw was a decent result, especially as I was resigned to a bonus point loss when Hewat put them 9-6 up with not much left to go.

2). Clegg -

Looks a real prospect. Obviously much work to do, but slotting that last minute penalty showed guts.

3). Defence -

The multi-coloured wall looks like it's starting to stand firm again - with some caution. Had Tagietc. not gone off injured I suspect LI might well have won - our blitz on their 10/12 channel was in defiance of how we know LI like to play, using wide moves and miss passes to get their wingers in space. Strettle hauled him down in a scramble and a number of times we were running backwards hard to try and stop them as they simply bypassed our banana defence.

4). The Quins' Head is back -

OK, so it's not quite finished and I suspect we'll be getting a call from the RFU asking for part of their Scrum Bar back, but the Witchfinder was very nice and it's great to see it up and running.

5). A couple of fans -

Firstly, the old fella berating the stewards by the Members' Bar about the continued presence of the Zizan Brooke Memorial Bucket in the gents and secondly, the chap sat in front of me, who congratulated me both at half and full time on my commentary and refereeing skills.

6). The atmosphere -

Plenty of chanting from both sides, although where I was sat in the West Stand we rather descended into bemused despair as the match progressed (see below). No doubt it was a morgue, though. I must also confess I miss the craptactular half time entertainment of Rugball.

BAD -

1). The Scrum -

Really shoved all over the place, with a lack of urgency at 8 & ( to get the ball out when it was going wrong. We even got shoved off it.

2). If it was a dive, Mike Brown's dive -

We have enough sly fouls in rugby, I do not want this pathetic habit imported from football, thank you very much.

3). Generally quality of the whole game -

The way both teams played, you would have thought there was a howling gale and the rain was coming down sideways, rather than a pleasant evening suited to free flowing rugby. Knock ons, fumbles, misplaced passes, offloads to no one or the wrong shirt and such general dimwitted numbskullery as I haven't seen for some time. A better advert for suspending the GP during the Test windows you won't see. As stated above, at times it was descending into high farce it was so bad. In the end, the draw was probably the right result as no team deserved to win and neither looked capable of scoring a try.

However, I am reasonably happy with the way things went. And it was certainly a whole lot better than the GP Playoffs..!