At today’s windy Sandy Park I wore my waterproof Chiefs jacket but as the official site has already posted a review of the Sedgley Park game, I’ll put my anorak on and give you a few Chiefs stats:
1 – player making his Chiefs debut – Ben Moon who scores a try in the process, with friends and family watching too!
1 - player captaining the team for the first time – Dan Parkes, not a bad start!
2 – our current league position
5 – the number of tries scored this season by Matt Jess and that’s in 2 (TWO) games – the man oozes class, when he gets the ball I wonder what’s going to happen (as I do when Josh or Luffy get the ball!!)
5 - the number of players making their first appearance for the Chiefs this season: Bedford, Bolt, Gray, Moon and Kingsland
6 – the number of tries scored by Josh this season = 1 per game
6 – the number of tries scored by Sean Marsden in his four games
6 – the number of players who have appeared in all 6 matches; Kevin Barrett, Josh Dranuini, Chris Cracknell, Tom Johnson, Dan Parkes and Lewis Stevenson
10 – the number of players who started against Bedford last week who did not feature in today’s squad – even with such wholesale changes 11 tries were still scored today!
11 – tries scored today.
21 – Danny Gray’s personal points haul today (see 72.72)
33 – the number of players who have had game time in one or more of the six league games so far.
33 – the number of tries scored this year – have you signed up for the Friend’s try competition yet?
71 - the number of points scored today, a record at Sandy Park – to get a score remotely close to this you would have to go back… two weeks to the last home game!
72.72% - Danny Gray’s kicking accuracy today, not bad considering the length of time that he has been out injured and the wind today
258 – the number of Chiefs points this season = the top points scoring team in the league, thus far.
4477 – our average home league attendance this season
Another great result today, and well played to Sedgley Park who kept plugging away and acted with typical good grace (for rugby teams) at the end. With detractors criticising the size our squad it was good to see that PD and Co and rest players, especially those with knocks and replace them with keen quality players. Plus our long-term injured are under no pressure to return too soon.
There were so many plusses today: a lot of nifty passes, forwards and backs all doing their jobs well… very well and nearly a point a minute scored by the team. The ref and linesmen proved that they were human several times by making mistakes but what the heck. I spotted that Josh was “aware of” one of his legs as he left the field, let’s hope that the physios can sort it out quickly.
I would imagine that most of the 4,000 plus crowd left Sandy Park feeling good. I tried to get into the club shop at the end but it was crowded out so I am guessing that the tills are also feeling good tonight.
I am sure that Rob Baxter will have a fairly happy time tomorrow as he analyses the match, the real work will be picking the squad for Plymouth next week, surely Matt Jess has done enough to secure his place.
If any of the Chiefs read this then I just need to say “Thanks” another great effort, another great result. A wintery day was brightened by the display that you put on.
And finally for any visiting Pirates fans here’s a stat’ for you. Prior to today’s game, Manchester had shipped an average of 51 points in the 5 previous games and so the 6 – 12 loss to you guys was actually a pretty good result.
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