The first meeting of the clubs didn’t take place until February 1985, despite the fact that Nottingham were formed eight years before us, in 1877.  That was the fabled John Player Cup fourth round match which we won 12-11 thanks to Rob Andrew’s wayward goalkicking, England’s Director of Elite Rugby missing nine of his ten attempts at the posts.  Over the course of the last 25 years our paths have crossed 20 times in league and cup, with both sides having won and lost eight times in the league and twice in the cup.  Bizarrely, we’ve each won four at home and four away in the 16 league meetings, although the 1985 game was the only occasion when the away side have emerged triumphant in the cup. 

The first league meeting took place in September 1997 in Jewson National League One – level three of the pyramid - at ODP. We’d enjoyed back-to-back promotions to regain our position at that level twelve months previously after a six year absence, whereas Nottingham had fallen lower than ever before in league rugby.  They were one of the 12 founder members of Courage League One in 1987, enjoying five years in the top flight before being relegated alongside Rosslyn Park at the end of the 1991-92 season.  During this period they provided a number of players to the national cause – although Rob Andrew had moved to Wasps after just one season, Brian Moore was capped 25 times while playing for the club and studying law at Nottingham University – and reached the cup semi-finals in 1990-91. When England finally broke their long losing streak in Cardiff in 1991, it was Nottingham full-back Simon Hodgkinson who kicked a record seven penalties to claim 21 of their 25 points.  More recently, Hodgkinson has been a director of Samurai Sports - the new kit supplier to London Welsh.

Three years ago, as we enjoyed mid-table respectability and our highest ranking for five years, Nottingham had established themselves as ‘the best of the rest’ in National One.  In amassing 116 points from 30 matches –including 23 wins and 24 bonus points – they finished level with second-placed Exeter, albeit 27 points adrift of champions Northampton.  The Saints may have enjoyed a clean-sweep of 30 wins, but Nottingham were the only team to take two losing bonus points from them, falling desperately short 16-10 at home in November and 17-10 at Franklins Gardens in March.  Twelve months later they fell to fourth, ten points worse-off despite only winning one game fewer, while in last year’s inaugural Championship they finished the first half of the season in fifth, four points behind Welsh.  In the promotion play-offs, wins over both Welsh and Exeter put the Green & Whites in touching distance of the knockout stages, but two disappointing defeats to Doncaster saw them fall short.

Much of their recent success has been due to the talent-spotting of Director ofRugby, Glenn Delaney.  It’s fair to say that the dual-registration deal with Leicester has helped a bit, too, but the number of players leaving Meadow Lane for the Premiership in recent seasons is testament to the ex-London Irish lock’s ability to identify players with the potential to develop into Premiership-standard professionals.  It’s strange that the elite clubs are seemingly unwilling to appoint head coaches from lower levels of the hierarchy, preferring instead to promote ex-pros from within – the likes of Delaney and Mike Rayer at Bedford should surely have attracted the attention of owners and directors in the newly-christened Aviva (the insurers have replaced Guinness as title sponsors of the Premiership) and Magners, and our own Danny Wilson quit as Head Coach at Welsh to take an assistant coach role at the Gwent region.

Having signed a long-term deal to play at Notts County’s Meadow Lane ground in 2009,  taken-over by their landlords’ owner, Ray Trew, in the summer, hopefully signalling an end to the uncertainty and instability which threatened to derail their 2009-10 season before it had even kicked-off.  With all the boxes ticked to fulfil the off-the-field criteria for the Premiership, it will be interesting to see how Delaney’s men bounce-back from a heavy defeat in their only pre-season friendly, 54-7 at the hands of a strong Leicester Tigers XV.  If Welsh are to fulfil the expectations ofmany observers and emerge as genuine promotion contenders, the likes of Nottingham, Bedford and Pirates – our four clubs were separated by just six points after 22 games last term - will be the teams we have to overcome in order to pull away from the pack.  That’s not to underestimate the threat of Bristol, Rotherham – under the returning Andre Bester – or the rest of our Championship rivals, but as one of the pre-season promotion favourites, Welsh have the additional pressure of being expected to win everytime they take to the field - and win with style.

A couple of weeks ago, in his column in the Daily Telegraph, Des Lynam wrote of the joy that the start of the new football season brings to him as a fan of Brighton & Hove Albion.  He suggested that Wimbledon, The Open and Glorious Goodwood are ‘no comparable substitute for… supporting a team in the third tier of English football.  Without this regular fix of pleasure or pain, the long dark winter days would be insufferable.’  It’s easy to empathise with Des – the thought of dark afternoons on the duckboards is what keeps us going through the drudgery of Test match cricket and Murray-mania.  Let us hope that the next nine months or so bring us much more pleasure than pain, and we can look back on the achievements of our 125^th anniversary season next May with pride.

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