So here we are...

By Prof
January 13 2006

So here we are, soon after the start of a new year, an unbeaten run of games in the League and Cup behind us, leading the table by nine points and in the semi-final of the Powergen Trophy. Things are going well for Quins so far (touch wood etc.)

Ah the dark days of the end of last season: that missed kick, the empty feeling at the end of the Sale game, the crowing of some opposition fans and the dregs of the hacks, wondering if the club remain solvent with the West Stand (sorry Lexus Stand) debt over our heads…

Then things started to feel a bit better, the senior players announced that they were staying, in fact we managed to hold on to pretty much every player we wanted to keep. Most of the players who had been signed still came, including Andrew Mehrtens. Dean Richards was announced as the DOR and Evs moved to CEO, Andy Friend joined as Head Coach and JK stayed on as forwards coach.

The fans started buying season tickets in great numbers, the vast majority of the initial sales told the club to keep the discount on the ticket price, this led to the club announcing a ‘Loyalty Wall’ beside the entrance of the new Lexus Stand. There was a new addition at the north end of the Lexus with a statue of Nicky Duncombe being unveiled by his close friend, Dan Luger.

The sponsors all stayed on board, in fact NEC even increased the sponsorship and Lexus was added as the sponsor of the new West Stand. All of the hospitality boxes have sold out too.

The facilities in the ground are now something special, the players seem happy with the new changing, physio and medical rooms and it seems that only the officials have complained, apparently they wanted to all be in the same room rather than having separate ones – bless! The disabled facilities seem to have pleased the fans too, other than HQ I would have thought we have the best disabled facilities of any rugby ground in the UK.

The Club then announced the link with London Broncos and their name change to Quins RL, although some fans are still very suspicious it seems that the majority of Quins supporters are quite interested in seeing how this partnership will pan out. The RL fans certainly seem to have liked what they saw when they joined the RU members' barbecue at the beginning of the season.

Then came the pre-season games, no trips to Ireland or France for us this time, we had to make do with Bristol, Saracens and London Irish. The first game was a loss at home to London Irish, followed by a stonking win over Bristol, followed by a dubious one point loss to Saracens. The squad we put out at the Middlesex 7s did better than we have done for many a year losing to the eventual winners in the semi final.

Then the season proper started and as we all know Quins have a better run of wins this season then ever before in their illustrious history, we have now notched up 14 wins in the league, 3 wins in the cup and another win against Manu Samoa adding up to 18 wins in total. We are currently nine points clear of our closest rivals. We have the highest points for (509) and the lowest points against (174). In nine of the games we have scored more than four tries with the game against Exeter being a 12 try win. Ugo Monye scored five of them and he is now top of our try scoring table with eighteen in all games. Ugo is currently second in the ND1 try scoring table with ten tries just two behind Cornish Pirates’ Richard Welding, then in third and fourth places we have Nick Easter and Simon Keogh.

While we’re looking at ND1 statistics we are leading the table as having the best discipline, only 3 yellow cards have been awarded against us this season, Plymouth albion are just behind us with 4, at the bottom of the table are Otley and Doncaster both on 9 yellows, Pertemps Bees with 11 yellows and a red and Coventry with a massive 13 yellows and a red (on average 1 per game)!

On the kicking front Mehrtens is only 4^th in the strike rate table with Arno de Jager leading on 84.21% with Mehrtens on 82.05%.

While Mehrtens’ overall rate isn’t what we’d expect from him a lot of the problem came from the Exeter game when he missed quite a few conversions. If we look at the penalty strike rate he has got 26 out of 27, or  96.3%, not too bad really!

Quins have also recently broken the record for number of season ticket holders with 5,158 at the moment beating last season’s 5,008, and the average league gate has been 9,200 (including a record gate of 10,843 against Cornish Pirates) compared with 8,400 for last season in the ZP. The season ticket sales compare very favourable with the GP teams being similar to the number having been sold this season at Gloucester.

If (d.v.) we are promoted then we should have a team worthy of the GP, already we have signed Nicholas Spanghero (2 years) and Paul Volley (1 year) from Castres Olympique and there are another 4-8 still to come and if the rumours are true then there could be some very big names playing in the famous shirt next season.

Looking back at this season we have tried out a number of the youngsters from the Academy and they have shown their class. We must have had the youngest average age of a Quins team in our history (and that with Dippy still in the squad!)

The youngsters have really shown an enjoyment and hunger in the way they have played when given the chance and that goes for the fans too. They have traveled in larger numbers than ever before, and they have undoubtedly devoured more hog roasts and beer on the away trips than ever before too.

We fans have certainly had some enjoyable trip this season and we’ve been to some new grounds and have made some good friends in ND1. From a fans point of view this season has been great: visiting new rugby grounds, not old, squatted in football grounds; meeting new sets of fans; enjoying a greater variety of food and drink; and even winning games on the road. By all accounts ND1 seems to be enjoying having Quins in it, the attendances have been record or near record for our away games, there has been more interest from the media and the taking on the day have been extremely high for the home club.

Quinssa, the supporters' association, is having a good season too with more coaches being run than before, more people travelling on them, more events being held (there is a Meet The Academy Evening at the end of the month), a higher membership, more press coverage and more support for the club than ever before. 

So all in all it’s been a pretty good season so far, here’s hoping it continues in the same way and, apologies to the people who delighted in seeing us relegated, sorry, but I’m rather enjoying this season.

And finally, when all’s said and done whatever else happens it looks like we’re going to be getting a new score board next season!