By Phil
March 5 2015
After winning ugly against Harlequins down at Franklin's Gardens last time out, Northampton Saints are off to Kingsholm to take on Gloucester Rugby in Round 17 of the Aviva Premiership season. COYSDC editor, Phil Hollis, dusts off his quill and looks ahead to the game...
GLOUCESTER RUGBY vs NORTHAMPTON SAINTS
Saturday, 7th March 2015 - 3.15pm (BT)
KINGSHOLM, GLOUCESTER
MATCH PREVIEW
50 SHEDS OF BLACK, GREEN AND GOLD
Things you didn’t know part 342 – Kingsholm, Gloucester Rugby’s home, is nicknamed “Castle Grim” as the land for the original ground was purchased by the club in 1891 from the Castle Grim Estate for the princely sum of £4000. When originally built, the club constructed what was then called “The Sixpenny Stand” to cater for its local working-class community fan base. This would become known as “The Shed”, the famous (now) 4000 capacity terrace, home to the great unwashed of the Cherry and White support. Here endeth the history lesson.
Kingsholm is the destination for Northampton Saints this weekend as they take the 2 hour journey through the beautiful Cotswolds countryside to front up to a Gloucester team who have stuttered this season. Currently sitting 8th in the Aviva Premiership, a full eight points behind Sale Sharks, it has been a frustrating season for a club which has traditionally been seen as one of England’s premier sides. In the previous sixteen rounds of matches this season they have only come out on the right side of the score line on seven occasions and have only managed two bonus points for scoring four tries or more (bothtimes were against league whipping boys London Welsh). Interestingly, Gloucester’s points total of 35 points is helped by 5 losing-bonus points which suggests the side is not being rolled over in many of the games in which they finish a defeated team. Indeed, a quick look at their last five games tends to bear out this simple theory:
Chiefs (W) 25-26
Saracens (W) 24-23
Tigers (L) 18-15
Welsh (W) 48-10
Wasps (L) 32-21
Things are just not quite clicking for this young Gloucester team. They dominated for large parts of the game last time out against Wasps but could not turn possession into points. Then a succession of defensive lapses let Wasps back into the match and, despite a number of chances, they couldn’t turn the game around. Stand-in captain, Tom Savage (regular skipper Billy Twelvetrees is away with England), struggled to hide his disappointment after the match saying – “The boys are really disappointed with that result, a few chances have gone begging and we’ve leaked some soft tries which has led to us losing the game.” What does this tell us? Well, probably nothing new or ground-breaking but it shows that the Cherry and Whites will be competitive but are certainly not unbeatable. Indeed, even the influence of The Shed and rest of the home crowd has not helped their cause. Gloucester have played eight homes matches so far this term and it’s a perfect split in the results, four wins, four losses – can Saints put another tick in the (L) column on Saturday?
Turning our attention to the current Aviva Premiership champions, Northampton Saints sit pretty at the top of the league ladder, 60 points to the good and an encouraging 12 points clear of 2nd placed Saracens and the rest of an increasingly congested top half of the table. With the Black, Gold and Green looking good for a home semi-final (one chicken, two chickens…), it’s perm any three from five, maybe six for the rest of the play-off berths. And here’s the thing, Northampton have been winning without playing really well. Here are their last five results:
Newcastle Falcons (W) 39-31
Sale Sharks (L) 20-7
London Irish (W) 15-9
Bath (W) 13-21
Harlequins (W) 17-13
The last three games in particular, Quins, Bath and Irish show the side’s ability to grind out a result even when being slightly off-the-boil. Whether this will be enough in a tricky away fixture (who knows which Gloucester team will turn up) is yet to be seen of course but it may not be enough if the Gloucester backs see decent ball.
Saints will again be without the services of captain Dylan Hartley and centre Luther Burrell who are away with England but those two apart, the coaching team of Jim Mallinder and Dorian West have a pretty much full strength squad to pick from. Will they rotate a couple of players, do they feel the need to tweak the team – I think I’ve got more chance of getting a date with Karen Gillan than trying to accurately predict the starting XV!
Way back in September, in the reverse of this fixture, Northampton Saints started the current campaign with an emphatic 53-6, eight try, romp against their opponents this weekend. Whilst it is now over five months since that game, Gloucester will still be smarting from what was (for them) an embarrassing showing and will be keen to rectify matters. If Saints are able to get the right result on Saturday afternoon I have no doubt that the margin of victory will be of a much tighter margin.
Finally, as the game is live on BT Sport, your correspondent will be in front of the sofa for this one, gaining brownie-points from Mrs Phil by doing the ironing whilst watching the match. Sir for Satdee is Mr Greg Garner who I felt did a fine job the last time he took charge of a Saints game (away at Bath). He will surely be better than Tim Wigglesworth’s whistle-happy performance down at the Gardens last Friday evening which led to a staccato affair whereby a proper game of rugby had little chance of breaking out. The weather looks as if it’s going to be fine so let’s hope for an entertaining afternoon, Saints getting the result and me not ending up ironing, bored.
Saints by 6.
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Quote:Merlin-k
"Possibly forgot that A certain winger called North..."
Quote:St Dormouse
Super preview Mr.H. Interesting that you,too,use the ironing to justify an afternoon in front of the box.