Prof’s Positives Week 8: Leeds Tykes

By The Prof
November 6 2003

This week saw Harlequins playing their first of three matches against Leeds which are due to take place over the next five weeks. The travelling Quins support was smaller than usual because the game was being played on the Friday (as is the forthcoming Powergen Cup game).

Apparently the reason for this is because they get a much larger crowd when they have Friday games and according to Phil Davies the atmosphere is so much better at evening games. The crowd was 3,205.

Quins’ last visit to Headingley left a bit of a sour taste in the mouth, a penalty against us ad the binning of Luger (who was on the other side of the pitch from play) which gave Leeds the last minute penalty which allowed them to win by one point – this season the team were on the path for revenge.

Chris Bell, Ace Tiatia, Ugo Monye, Josh Taumalolo and Karl Rudzki were all supposed to be back from injury although Ace broke down in training and it looks like he will be out for a couple more weeks. Bell, Taumalolo and Monye started and Rudzki was selected on the bench. Dunne had his first Premiership start in place of Burke who had received a knock on his calf the week before.

The game wasn’t the best, it was a cold and windy night, and there were a fair few handling errors and missed kicked at goal. Obviously the main positive was that we picked up another away win, we only had two last season in the League – London Irish and London Wasps (sic) – this season we already have two – Rotherham Titans and Leeds Tykes.

For a team with a load of players still missing (Leonard and Greenwood on World Cup duty; Harder, Tiatia, Fuga, Miall, and Worsley who had ‘flu’) it was a gutsy performance. The front five played very well especially in the second half – there was one wonderful scrum where Leeds were attacking in midfield and the front row of Jones, hayter and Dawson tore their opposition apart, Vos was so impressed with the outcome that he gave both props a big hug – priceless! Hayter, who has got a lot of stick from people posting on this site, performed very well even though he has been effectively playing on one leg for the last couple of weeks.

Our defence was strong again only letting in one try (and that was taken from a quick tap penalty about 5m in front of the mark – bitter, me? Yes please.). We managed three tries, the first one looked very simple, an attacking five metre scrum in the middle of the field, Willis pops the ball to Dunne who runs laterally before an opening appears before him and he glides through in an arc to score to the left of the posts.

The second try was an opportunist one, the ball was spilled in mid-field near the half way line and Vos is first there and puts boot to ball, Bell sprints through after it and beats the defence, he kicks the ball forward and pounces to score. The third try was an interception, Leeds were camped on our line and throwing the ball about when all of a sudden out on the right wing Keogh has the ball in hand and he is charging along the touchline to score under the posts.

So we scored three tries away from home, only allowed the opposition (the ZP’s highest try scorers to date) to score once and we were the first people to beat them at home this season since Bath beat them in the first game of the season. But what’s more important the team seemed to really pull together and at the end they looked very happy indeed.

On the injury front it was good to see so many players back last week and Tani and Burke should be fit and ready for the next game and George Harder should be back for the game against Bath and Ace the week after and then we’ll just be left with Simon Miall in the physios’ room (d.v.).

Out in Australia Jason Leonard will be picking up his 111th cap for England which matched Philippe Sella’s number for France – Jase has five Lions caps on top of this though. Will Greenwood who scored last week against Uruguay is now only one try away from equalling Guscott on 30 but he is still a fair way from catching Rory Underwood on 49 tries.

Elsewhere in the club the second team had a week off but the U21s played against Cambridge University U21s and came away with a good win (0-48). Some familiar names appeared on the score sheet (Adrian Jarvis, Andy Reay, Henry Barratt and Tom Williams) with the left wing Koloko also scoring.

The U19s repeated the 1st XV’s result by beating Leeds U19s. The visiting side played well in the first half and took the game to Quins. The second half was different, Quins kept possession for long periods and Tosh Masson who had performed well all game until he went off with an injured arm/shoulder scored. The other Quins scores came from Mike Brown, the second one was amusing with some good ricochets of Leeds players before he regathered to score a try that the Keystone Cops would have been proud of!

The Amateurs also chalked up a much needed win on Saturday beating Old Grammarians 8-27 away from home with tries coming from Benn Richards, Andy Robinson, Kwasi Appah and Brandon Van Der Westerhuizen.

The Ladies made it a clean sweep of win for Quins sides when they beat Clifton 2nds away 0-38 with tries coming from Leonie Webster, Pippa Butt, Dani Knight (2), Helen Cushion, Hannah Greaves and Dani Knight converting four of them.

This coming week sees some exciting fixtures with Quins being visited by the on form team – Northampton Saints. Also on Saturday the U21s are playing away at Oxford University while the U19s travel to Exeter to take on the Chief and the Amateurs have a home fixture against Old Haberdasher. On Sunday both Jase and Shaggy are playing against Wales in the RWC quarter final and the Ladies take on Avon down in the west country. On Tuesday the seconds have a home game at The Stoop against Cambridge University – try to get down to see if the seconds can continue their unbeaten start to the season. Then we have another trip up to watch the lads play against Leeds – this time in the Cup.

Come On You Quinssa!