Prof's Positives Week 3: London Irish

By The Prof
October 2 2003

This is going to be a slightly tricky article for me to write because I wasn’t there to witness the third victory of our Zurich Premiership campaign but thank you to BatQuin for sending me suggestions.

Well the main positives have to be that we won again, we beat our old local (now not so local) rivals and we are still top of the league. The matches between our two teams are rarely high scoring walkovers but they are always tense and this game was to be no exception.

The Harlequins defence was excellent again especially after London Irish scored the only try of the game. This has been a recurring theme this season, the team has been starved of possession for long periods but good and powerful defending and good work by the forwards in turning over ball has lead us from a weak position to victory. If only we could hold on to our own ball well it would be much better.

It was the first chance for many to see the Tongan new boy, Josh Taumalolo. He was playing in the centre and managed a drop goal to get his name on the score sheet in the ZP for the first time. It wasn’t much of a game for fine flowing rugby but expect to see more of his skills in forthcoming matches (the devastating tackle he put in on a charging Castre lock in the preseasons still brings a smile to my face).

Burke again had a good game and he kicked 100% of his attempts at goal, let’s hope for our sake that he doesn’t get called up to the Irish World Cup squad, although in Andy Dunne (and Adrian Jarvis) we have two very talented fly halfs waiting to fill his shoes.

The other main positive from the match has to be the cheekiness of Ben Willis. Strudwick was approaching the line, Ben Willis runs beside him saying in his best Irish (or was that Kiwi or, since it worked, South African) accent “Strudders pass me the ball”, and he did, he then let rip with a group of colourful Anglo Saxon words! The main thing was that the try scoring opportunity was stopped, well done Ben.

On the injury front Roy Winters is fit again and Bell, Harder and Rudzki should all be fit by the end of the month.

There have been some problems with the catering at The Stoop with new staff and companies involved. The Club asked for our feedback and we gave it. They certainly seemed to have addresses most of the problems and The Stoop is again the best place to enjoy a game of rugby.

While the first team were winning at The Stoop the U21s lost a hard fought game away to Leicester, winger Chinudu Okolu scored a brace of tries and the promising centre Tom Allen also scored. The U19s won again against a Warwickshire Development XV with tries coming from Saha, Cripps, Brown, Connor, Woolnough and Owen. Both junior sides have won three out of four games so far this season.

On Monday the second XV recorded another fine win, this time away to Bath. Tries came from Horstmann, Bemand, Barratt, Fuga, Williams, Moore and Sherriff. The scrum and lineout worked very well and the backs looked good with the ball they received with the centre partnership of Barratt and Reay looking good as did Bemand who is back from his month on loan to Bristol.

There was also an excellent ‘Members Meet The Players’ evening which has been written up by BatQuin elsewhere.

In closing I would just like to wish Simon Miall a complete and speedy recovery.