Prof’s Positives Week 11: Saracens

By The Prof
November 14 2002

Well it’s been a bit of a mixed week at Quins, with half the teams winning and half the teams losing. The firsts' match against Saracens really was, as many people have said, a game of two halves.

Quins had a pretty strong line up with the ‘spiteful’ Mike Scott retaining the services of Fijian international ‘Big Bill’ Satala who partnered Nick Greenstock in the centres. Slemen came in to replace Greenwood at fly-half, Starr replaced Leonard and Wood replaced a very unlucky Fuga.

As always on these occasions there was a challenge from the Fez Boys and a pre-match 15-a-side boat race was the first challenge. The Quins’ boat race team, who had been practicing hard in the Red Lion before the game, were proud victors and any accusation of cheating will be met by a visit from my solicitors! The second challenge that was also pre-match was a quiz, the Quins’ representative – SleepyHollow – ran off at the last minute to leave yours truly to face the daunting task of a quick-fire quiz against Large for the befezzed ones. There must have been terrible cheating because large won – tapes of the incident have been sent to the FBI for analysis.

But on to the game, well the first 26 minutes were terrible from a Quins point of view, but since this is a positive article I will gloss over that. Moore had another good game and scored Quins’ first of four tries following a break by Satala who showed good attacking instincts. This started to turn the game our way before half time and Evs apparently had a ‘bit of a chat’ with the forwards during the break which worked wonders – I wonder if he will try it before kick off on Sunday.

In the second half Quins continued to pull back the 26 point deficit with a number of players performing well. Woody was pulled off just before the hour mark and was replaced by Fuga who had a trademark fine game. Duncombe had his work cut out playing against a very sprightly Bracken but he held his own and still looks a very good bet to regain his England place in years to come. He was the scorer of a fine try that came from a line out and drive – a thing of beauty it certainly was.

Vos had a good second half and managed to get his first try for Quins, he was also seen urging the team onwards right at the end of the game when we went behind – he is certainly a player that doesn’t give up and it certainly looks like he will be a great captain when he takes over the leading role on Sunday.

Frodo who had a surprising ten minutes rest after contesting a 50:50 high ball with the Sarries full back sent a fine cross-field kick into the waiting arms of Moore which lead to Matt getting his second try of the game.

So we lost, in injury time, when we really could have won, but the grit and determination shown in the final hour of the match was great to see and it shows that if we can get our hands on the ball we can score. One other positive from this game was that we had no injuries, in fact the physio only went onto the pitch once and that was by mistake when he saw a player go down that he thought was ours but it turned out to be a Sarries player!

The travelling Quins’ supporters were noisy especially during the second half when they almost shouted the team to victory, and thankfully there was complete quiet during the pre-match minute’s silence for Remembrance Sunday – something that was sadly lacking at Twickenham the day before in the match against New Zealand.

Elsewhere in the club the Seconds won easily against Cambridge university, it was great to see Burke, Luger, Hayter & Mockford return from injury. Burke did everything required of him – he had a 100% success rate with the boot and he came through without injury, Luger too did well, scoring a try from his unusual position of centre, before being pulled off by the management after half an hour. Hayter had a very good game in a dominant front five especially when you think he hasn’t played for about 18 months. Bemand was very lively behind the scrum and he showed his blistering pace covering back and beating the opposition winger to a ball behind our own line. He was moved to wing when Matt Powell was brought on to replace Luger, where he scored the last try of the game when Seb FitzGerald put in a good cross-field kick to him.

Other backs that stood out were the wing Henry Barrett who always looked dangerous with ball in hand and who scored a try and Tom Williams who played very well at full-back and who scored three tries and showed some lovely skills and good pace although there were a couple of times when you wished he would just clear the ball to touch rather than running at the opposition all the time.

Although all these players had good games the person who really stood out was Chelsea Clinton look-alike Luke Sherriff, he was all over the park, putting in tackles, making good yards, supporting well and clearing up at the back of the line out a number of times.

Another good thing to notice was the amount of talking going on between players on the pitch, the communication seemed good across the whole team and it showed in a good overall performance until well into the second half when there were too many players substituted and the game lost its shape.

Another set of positives comes from the Ladies ding dong battle with Avon. It was a biting encounter that ended up with the Quins ladies winning by 15 points to 14. The second row, Tanya Wilson, was the first try scorer, in fact it was her first try for Quins and apparently the score celebrations had to be seen to be believed! The second try also came from the front five when prop, Louise Clancy scored the second five pointer for Quins. Although Leah Carey didn’t score in this game she did perform well and set up Quins’ third and final try which was scored by wing Saskia Brazier-Kobus. The Ladies showed a lot of spirit to win this tight contest against a team that were previously unbeaten in the league.

The Amateurs had a lot of enforced changes to their team that went out of the Middlesex Cup to St Nick’s Old Boys.

So all in all an OK week, two wins (2nds & Ladies) and two teams showing a lot of spirit (the 1sts’ comeback and the Ladies’ victory). Let’s see what happens this week when the first team, U21s and U19s all play Wasps, the Amateurs play Sudbury & London Springboks, the Ladies play Supermarine and Will, Jase and Bill are all involved in internationals.

Finally the long term injured Bell, Winters & Sanderson are all a week closer to returning.