Preview: Harlequins vs Wasps

The gnashing and wailing reached fever pitch this week after a humbling opening night at the Stoop last Friday night. Quins were negated ruthlessly by a typically efficient Saracens defence and played in to their hands on a number of occasions. The finger pointing has been fierce amongst the more ardent fans and the reactions have been extreme. 

One thing is for certain, another such performance this weekend will spell big trouble for the 2011/12 Premiership winners. So many factors have been touted, for once it may be easier to list them out…

Captain Joe only giving Nev one sighter before deciding kicking to the post on every occasion was the way to go.
Failing to adequately replace JJ and Ollie Kohn.
Playing too many men into the breakdown whilst Sarries stood off flooding the defence and negating quick ball.
NEv’s got the yips.
Our ball carriers aren’t nasty enough.
Yarde and others didn’t exhibit the do or die attitude that a lot of their Sarries counterparts did.
Not enough passion on the night and basic handling errors led to many scrums where we continually let ourselves down…

The list goes on…

For me the performance on Friday night was one that was tactically naïve. There appeared to be little direction on the pitch and performance levels were nowhere near where they needed to be to face a team who has the hoodoo over us. Very simple to say but were there any positives to the night? Mike Brown was certainly one, he never gave up and single handedly stopped 2 tries from being scored with excellent defensive work. However he had a difficult night, Sarries territorial game neutralised him as an attacking threat and with NEv not having one of his greatest nights after being charged down early doors we lacked any sort of threat in attack. The possession stats for Quins were high but this was a result of Sarries game plan, however the tackle stats and penalty count were also heavily in Quins favour. The defence held firm on a number of occasions, which sounds odd in a 39-0 drubbing but that Saracens failed to take a bonus point in such a high scoring game speaks volumes.

More worrying for me was Conor’s assertion after the game that he hadn’t seen that coming. Barring a couple of the games at the end of last season we have not really hit our straps for a long time, for me that sort of pummelling has been on the cards. Our gameplan of playing through the middle with strong support runners has gotten weaker and weaker since our championship winning season. Where have the bulldozing ball carriers gone with support on their shoulders? Now we take the ball to ground more often than not or runners get isolated making the wrong instinctive decisions and are held up and the ball turned over. That particular game plan only works when the basics are right. Handling skills being key and a steady and competitive set piece, as if the former isn’t right you’ll be seeing an awful lot of the latter.

This weeks test will be against a Haskell-inspired resurgent Wasps. They had a fantastic result last week against Northampton, gained by getting the basics right and a generally belligerent attitude stemming from their sizeable back row and the wiley tactical play of veteran Andy Goode. To beat Northampton they used a combination of stubborn defence and really took the physical contest to them both at the break down and at the set piece. Haskell has the England No6 shirt dead in his sights and showed up Tom Wood on this occasion, Ashley Johnson has been no slouch at the start of this season, he’s demonstrated a fine rugby brain including grubber kicks and a bevvy of line breaks. Couple that with the talent they have outside of Goode and they are a dangerous outfit, this may be the season where they make good on the promise they have shown the last couple of seasons since their annus horribilis. Elliott, Wade and Varndell are backs that you can put up there with the best in the league, with the injury to Jackson however their stocks at fly half look as nearly as bare as Quins.

Their tight five is developing very nicely, built around the cornerstones of Matt Mullan and Joe Launchbury they have also recruited well in a beefed up Gaskell and Italian international, Cittadini at tight head. This is a bulky unit adding to an already impressively solid back row, the Quins pack will have to seriously up their output this week to gain the parity that will be required to test Wasps. Matthews in particular has some major work to do to keep up with his patter before the season of becoming the enforcer at Quins, his performances have been shown up by both Irish and Sarries locks so far and he seems far off matching his former stablemate Launchbury.

Injuries also seem to have taken hold of Quins fairly early this season, from a back line that seemed well stocked we could have Hopper, Walker, Lowe, Casson, Evans, Monye, Williams and Tikoirutuma missing this weekend. Young Harry Sloan may well get another crack at the Premiership, he’s a big unit who can offload, seems a little more subtle than Turner-Hall who still needs to do his level best to convince fans he is back to anything near his best. It seems likely that Botica will be our starting fly half alongside Care, Botica isn’t a bad player and was apparently playing with a continuing foot injury last season, so it’s down to him to regain his first season form. In the centres it looks like Turner-Hall will partner either Sloan or Tikoirutuma (if he makes it back from injury), failing that could we again see Clifford in there?! On the wings, we will turn to Yarde and Lindsay-Hague with Brown motoring along at full back. The dearth of options is such that we could have young Marchant on the bench, now he would be a wildcard, he’s performed well over the past year in all teams he has played in and seems to the manor born.

On to the ongoing debate about Marler as captain, some have rather lazily jibed that the club have appointed a jester as captain. However there is much more depth to Marler than this, against Irish those fortunate enough to have reflink would have heard him articulate Quins position well, being humble and self deprecating to ensure he did not fall foul of officialdom. He will learn, as Robshaw did before him, that sometimes it’s time to take the points and establish any sort of foundation to build on. After 2 games surely it is too soon to judge him, let’s return to this after 5 games and see if the opinion is the same, after all there is a leadership core in the team and the onus of responsibility does not fall solely on his shoulders.

With Wasps lacking an out and out open side flanker, perhaps this is more of a game for either Trayfoot or a more adventurous pick at blind side in Chisholm Jnr. Chisholm has begun to pop up on peoples radars, he has been romping in poor performing packs in the A League and pre-season and would add a much needed ball carrier to our pack, if he continues his improvement surely the coaching staff have to give him his head. Wallace has been poor by his own standards so far this season, and he hasn’t really picked up from his LV breakthrough season, his development should be a cause for concern. How has he lost ground on Fraser for example when he has been out injured for so long yet come back firing, is it because we have over played him? Has he started to believe the hype and lost the needle that we saw a couple of seasons ago? O’Shea needs to find the answers to these development issues with our younger players as Wallace is not the only one, some have plateaued and need to push on to the next level if we have any intention of keeping our place in the top four without bringing in seasoned players in the spine of the team. Trayfoot brings energy and a more mobile ball carrying option whilst Chisholm would bring combative bulk to compete against the duo of Haskell and Johnson who we could find will blast us off the breakdown ball.

The result of this game will be decided by attitude, if Quins come out angry and fired up then we will have a contest on our hands, if there is a mindset that last week was only a one off and we’ll be alright – this will be a long hard season. Very difficult one to call this, but I have to hope that the boys will be smarting from last week and want to put a few wrongs right… an exceptionally optimistic of Quins by 7pts is where my money is going.

Mrs Wyddy’s xmas present is riding on this…

COYQ!!!!