Prof's Positives Week 4: Saracens

By The Prof
October 9 2003

Up until this point it has been easy to write these articles, things although not perfect on the pitch were at least leading to winning score lines, this all changed up at Watford for the annual nerve jingler that is the Quins v Sarries game.

There weren’t many positives to come from the game although the pack performed excellently at the set pieces. In the scrum we were all over the Sarries pack, this lead to the penalty try near the end. The pick of the front five for me were Jim Evans who again showed his athleticism in the loose and Ceri Jones whose good support play allowed him to score the first try of the game.

Vos again showed what an excellent purchase he was, he lead by example throughout and he lead a fight back that meant Quins left Watford with a bonus point when it seemed more likely that we would be on the end of a record loss at one point. It’s a shame that we needed to draw on such inner strength at the end, it would have been much nicer to have been 20+ points up, but at least a bonus point was won. The two people who put the points on the board were scrum half/wing Simon Keogh who cut a lovely line to score and fly half Andy Dunne who kicked the conversions and a monster of a penalty which seemed to take an age to bounce over the bar after taking a path more associated with a pin ball.

Both junior teams won and won well over teams from Nottingham, the U21s winning 43-18 and the U19s 48-3. Names like Jarvis, Max Evans and Crowley who have all been mentioned in despatches before again played well for the U21s and Dene Richards scored a hat-trick in the U19s win (no he’s not that Dean Richards – the names are spelt differently!)

The second team game against London Irish also saw the Quins side score a victory to keep their unbeaten start to the season going. Again the base of this victory was the pack. Perhaps it’s not surprising when you have a starting front row of Worsley, Fuga and Gomez but it was lovely to see. The London Irish pack appeared to be on Tefal roller-skates, on an oil slick, on ice. They were shunted backwards, sideways and spun so they hardly got any decent ball at all in the tight. The ascendancy of the Quins pack can be seen in the try count, London Irish scored one, Quins’ backs scored one (Keogh) and the Quins front row scored four – two for Worsley, one for Fuga and one for Dejager.

Hayter was back from injury and his throwing in to the lineout was excellent and it was great to see Roy Winters having a stormer, he was playing in the second row and he performed well and I doubt if some of the London Irish players have caught their breath yet after some of the huge crunching tackles he put in again and again.

The Quins back line looked very sharp, Keogh fed Dunne well at half back and the centre partnership of Reay and Barratt looked good as always. Matty Moore did a couple of his jinking runs and in the first half Scott Bemand seemed to be hanging out on the right wing waiting for the cross-field kick (sadly the one time a kick was sent across he showed amazing pace to get to it but then sadly he overran it with the try line just inches away!)

The last bit of play to really mention was when Tom Williams (the young full back) got the ball deep in his own half and very tight to the touch line, the London Irish team thundering towards him, he plants his foot and makes to kick, but instead of launching the ball down the touchline he does the most delicate of kicks – it probably didn’t go more than about 7’ in the air, it gently looped over the attackers allowing Tom to run round them and regather – a fantastic little bit of individual skill.

A fair number of this second XV team will be pressing for first team action very soon.

NB For the statisticians amongst you the second XV have won all four games they have played this season (including the pre-season against London Welsh) and have scored 135 points and conceded only 55!

On the injury front the likes of Harder, Bell and Rudzki are all getting very close to returning to action which can only be a good thing for the team but it will give some nice selection problems to the management.

On the amateur side of the club the Ladies won a hastily arranged friendly against London Welsh with a scoreline of 0-44. Tries came from Jo Everitt, Dani Knight, Laura Quinn, Mel Antao and a hat-trick from Donna Tracey. The game was hastily arranged after their opposition in the National Cup pulled out giving them a bye to the next round. The Ladies team captain, Sam Marshall, also ran a training day for girls including those from the harlequin Ladies U16 and U18 squads.

The men’s side lost against Old Millhillians but perhaps it wasn’t surprising with six players injured and one suspended from the fixture.

Finally the Rugby World Cup is about to start and Quins have two players in the starting 22 against the team from the Trans-Causasus, Georgia. Well done and good luck Jase and Will.