Welsh go into Saturday’s game on the back of a last-gasp draw at Plymouth last weekend.  It was only the third drawn match of the Championship season, following the Blues’ 15-15 draw at Coventry’s Ricoh Arena and a surprise 31-31 scoreline between Bees and Pirates last month.  This equates to one drawn match in every 39 games, compared to eight draws (one in thirty) in the bloated National One last season.  The Guinness Premiership, as has been widely reported, has seen nine draws in the 72 matches this season, or one in every eight games – only Wasps and Northampton have not yet been involved in a drawn match in the first twelve rounds of fixtures.  By comparison, last week’s result was only Welsh’s 12^th draw in nearly 23 years of league rugby – one in every forty games, on average.

Welsh actually drew their first league meeting with Bedford 6-6, courtesy of two Paul Turner penalties at Goldington Road back in 1987, and at the end of the following season we each took our leave of Courage Two, albeit in opposite directions.  Our paths didn’t cross again until September 2000, the first season of the Adrian Davies years, in a match which saw nine London Welshmen – Adam Bidwell, Jurian Prins, Simon Mitchell, Joel Brannigan, Chad Eagle, Andy Johnson, Ken O’Connell, Trevor Boynton and Florent Rossigneux – make their home débuts.  By this time Bedford had spent four years in the top flight in two separate spells of two years apiece, but they have been at level two of the pyramid for a total of nineteen seasons overall.  In the 22 league meetings to date, Welsh have triumphed just five times, and October’s 28-17 victory is the only time we’ve won by more than a converted try.

Bedford are currently three points behind Welsh in fourth place in the Championship table, both clubs having won their home league fixture.  We are also both assured of our place in the promotion play-offs, and the current top six look reasonably settled, barring any shocks such as Moseley claiming two wins against Exeter and Bristol or – perhaps less fanciful - Doncaster winning four of their remaining five fixtures, which include a visit to Bedford next Saturday.  The Blues also stand in third place in Pool C of the British & Irish Cup courtesy of a 36-24 home win over Llanelli and a 29-3 defeat in Ulster in the opening round.  The Irish side travel to Carmarthenshire on Saturday afternoon, with a potential showdown at Ravenhill awaiting the Exiles at the end of the month.

Bedford’s leading points scorer is full-back James Pritchard with 162, six points behind Aled Thomas.  The Canadian international is in his sixth season with the Blues, although he spent a couple of seasons at Plymouth and Northampton between 2004 and 2006, and he’s racked-up almost 1,500 points for the club in 133 league appearances.  Ironically, he was in the Albion side that lost 13-14 to Bedford in the final of the Powergen Shield in 2005; he converted Alfie To’oala’s first minute try, but after his replacement in the Blues’ line-up, Mark Harris, had touched down with 15 minutes remaining, centre Leigh Hinton kicked the decisive penalty three minutes from time.  That success came 20 years after their 28-12 victory over Rosslyn Park in front of a Twickenham crowd of nearly 18,000 in the final of the RFU Knockout Cup (as it was then known) – Park had comfortably beaten Welsh, 22-9, at Priory Lane in Round One.

Top try-scorers for the Blues are wingers Ian Davey and Luke Fielden, with seven apiece in the league.  They both scored in our 23-30 defeat on Boxing Day, and Fielden also grabbed a pair at ODP as well as another brace against Llanelli at the end of November.  Davey is the only player to have claimed four tries in a Championship game this season (against Bees in October), while Pritchard’s 24 points against Nottingham last month is the biggest individual haul to-date.  Samoan flanker Paul Tupai is currently joint-second in the yellow card table with three – Moseley lock Ali Muldowney now has four, having collected three in six appearances since Christmas.  Former Northampton flanker Tupai, conversely, hasn’t been binned since the draw at Coventry at the start of December, although two yellows at Moseley last week – for Ben Lewitt and Ian Vass – mean that with 12 yellows to the Welsh’s ten, Blues stand second to Bees overall in the indiscipline charts.

REMINDER - THIS MATCH IS A NOON KICK-OFF WITH WALES v SCOTLAND BEING SHOWN ON THE BIG SCREENS IN THE CLUBHOUSE LIVE AT 2PM!

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