Prof’s Positives Week 14: Saracens

By The Prof
December 6 2002

Well first things first – we won, taking out run of home wins to five in the Zurich Premiership or six in all competitions. Even though both sides seemed to want to lose the game we got a modicum of revenge for the away loss to Saracens a few weeks back.

Well it was a game full of errors and it looked like we might lose it at the end but with the final whistle came a very welcome win. Burkey had a fabulous day with the boot slotting eight out of eight ending up with a personal tally of 21 points.

Moore’s dive to score under the posts was an amazing feat of athleticism, surpassing even Ben Cohen’s measly dive to score against New Zealand, although disappointingly we were denied a promised back-flip from Nathan Williams when he scored an amazing try that came from a thundering break by Andre Vos. The first try was nice too, a beautifully weighted cross-field kick from Will Greenwood (a thing that was first developed by Quins back in the Adrian Stoop era) that was gathered by Tani Fuga.

The scrum performed well in the tight, and even when Jase was binned for preventing quick ball at a ruck and Vos went off to allow the injured Gomez to return to the front row, they out scrummaged the eight men of Saracens. The pack as a whole played well (how often have I said that this season) with Dippy, Tani and Vos having very good games and Codling being a great force in the lineouts as usual. The front five were more than a match for their opposition and again Starr put in a hard scrummaging performance after he came on for Gomez who was nursing an injured shoulder.

The fact that there was yet another 7000+ crowd shows how far we have come as a club, what a great job the marketing people are doing and how great the need is for The Stoop to be redeveloped.

A win is a win and four points are always welcome so we can be satisfied with the result even if there seemed to be suicidal tendencies amongst the team towards the end. One thing to remember is that we have now won the same number of Premiership games as we did last year and we are only half way through the season. Also, this performance was streets ahead of the dire performance against Northampton up at Franklin’s Gardens.

Elsewhere in the club the amateurs lost a friendly against Lensbury 5-17 with a try coming from Ian Langman. It was a promising performance nevertheless with new players being brought into the side and a number of players returning from injury., . The U21s’ game was postponed with Saracens being unable to field a team, and the Ladies (playing the first Quins match of December) defeated Beckenham away from home 0-24 with Alex Burbidge scoring a brace of tries and Dani Knight scoring one. The final game was a second team game against Leicester on Monday night, sadly Quins lost a close game 25-15 but it was against a strong Leicester ‘Extras’ side boasting a number of first team players. From the Quins point of view the defence was strong for much of the game and a number of players continued to come back well from injury – Hayter, Dawson, Mockford etc. Hayter scored his first try in a Quins shirt and Mockford made a number of strong runs. The other try for Quins was scored by Wilcocks – a player who looks slight but who has put in a number of fine performances so far this season and one who is strong in defence (seeing him bring down a charging (lumbering) Craig Quinnell at The Stoop earlier in the season was a delight to see.

With ‘Pass-the’ Buck Shelford slagging off his players and Deano issuing orders banning photos being taken at Welford Road on Monday night it makes one glad that we have the management and office staff that we do.

Finally a few players are getting very close to returning to the field after being out with injuries – Pat Sanderson, Chris Bell and Nick Duncombe. Vos will have an enforced rest for the next two weeks because he is not registered for the Parker Pen Challenge Cup which will give him time to recover from a niggling shoulder injury.

Please not we are hoping to sponsor the Ladies team for a match or two since they don't have a club sponsor this season, the money is used for paying for the pitch, the referee, travel etc, if you would like to contribute (the cost per game is £200) then please drop me a line on theprof@diamondgeezers.org.uk