March report - LI v Treviso
By SteveS
November 11 2007
Our resident journo SteveS sums up the precedings when Treviso came to the MadStad to play us in the Heineken Cup. Coming off the back of some lacklustre Anglo-Welsh performances (read "losses") it was difficult to know which London Irish we'd be watching...
November 11 2007
Our resident journo SteveS sums up the precedings when Treviso came to the MadStad to play us in the Heineken Cup. Coming off the back of some lacklustre Anglo-Welsh performances (read "losses") it was difficult to know which London Irish we'd be watching...
Job done, a big 42-9 win and a crucial bonus point banked - but how to judge the true worth of this “job”?
Two contrasting reactions sum up the debate – a couple of stalwarts sitting in front of me in the Lower West got up and headed for their half-time drink in the concourse bars TEN minutes early, so disgusted where they at our mounting error rate. Meanwhile, the guy just behind me watching his first ever London Irish game sat their enthralled - and later pronounced himself “amazed” at the high quality of our performance after we wrapped up the seven-try win.
The new guy certainly had the benefit of not feeling those peculiar pre-match nerves affecting us stalwarts, brought on by our fitfully inconsistent performances this season. The groans heard around the stadium in the first half were of course an echo emerging from that abysmal Quins game last time out, our patience with a misfiring London Irish team understandably low.
Smithy was unapologetic about targeting the Treviso game for his “Big Guns” in his match programme preview – and I think our main man has it spot on. The eye-opening facet of his selection was the pairing of our two England World Cup players at half-back, the expectation that they would supply the decision-making accuracy and class for a team cruelly denied the key services of Shane Geraghty once more.
This was the expectation – how would the reality fare?
Certainly, early on, expectations were not fulfilled. Catty took the rather odd strategic decision to have us playing virtually all the opening exchanges of the game inside our own half, with frequent devil-may-care Barbarians-style rugby deep inside our 22. Brave, undoubtedly, but as for settling the frayed nerves of long-suffering Irish fans, heart-attack stuff.
The penny began to drop when our over-elaborate play gifted the Treviso team an interception. Thankfully, the guy we saw sprinting towards our try-line turned out to be a fat Italian prop. De Vedia was able to avoid early blushes by mopping up Fatty’s kick and chase. The surrender of field position however did eventually cost us points when a LI player was penalised for going off his feet inside our own half, and the impressive boot of South African Goosen gave Treviso a 0-3 lead.
Irish repaired the damage straight away, opportunistic work at the restart by Danaher grabbing a loose tap-back and setting up Richards for a sniping run, and he in turn milked a not rolling away penalty for Hewat to tie it up at 3-3.
From this point, we took an iron grip of the game, albeit one often undermined by a stray pass, a wrong decision or an over-ambitious offload. Treviso to their credit were making some inroads disrupting our scrum and our line-out was also not up to its usual high standards.
But we stayed on the front foot thanks to some eye-catching individual displays, notably from Leguizamon and Mapasua. It was the latter’s blockbusting ball-carry to near the Treviso try line that forced another penalty and 5-yard lineout. Our forwards did their stuff and drove JML over for our opening try midway through the first half, an early enough score to at last start perking up a nervily quiet home crowd.
Hewat missed the wide-angle conversion and Goosen shortly after showed how it should be done with a fantastic wide kick from close on 50 metres that cut our lead to 8-6, after we had been penalised for entering a maul from the side.
Some collective doubts crept back. While we attacked the Treviso line incessantly, swinging the ball in the three-quarters first to the left, then to the right, all the good work was often undermined by a poor decision. De Vedia made a loose offload in the corner to snuff out one chance. Then Richards maddeningly ran up the blind alley of the Treviso pack with players free outside. And then, to cap it all, JML attempted a bizarre drop goal from about 12 yards out that skewed horribly wide. Head in hands time everywhere in the stadium, the fellas in front of me headed to the bar cursing our incompetence.
This 10-minute period up to half-time turned out to be the most crucial of the game. If our heads had dropped at these mistakes and Treviso had gone in at half-time in touching distance, low confidence could have paralysed our second-half effort. As it was, thankfully we gritted our teeth and dug in. A fine Delon Armitage break once again gave us field position near the Treviso line.
But then Welsh ref Tim Hayes seemed to turn against us when he ignored one of the most garish sinbin-level offsides you’ll ever see, a Treviso player running round behind Richards while the ball was still in the ruck. Still, we kept ploughing away at their tryline and finally we succeeded with another scrambled close-range try, with Richards seemingly attempting another fruitless mis-match against the Treviso pack, but the ref signalling a try and Dan Murphy emerging with the ball at the bottom of the pile of bodies.
This was an absolutely crucial score before half-time – it only gave us a 13-6 lead but it was the turning point of the game, the moment that finally saw Treviso psychologically blink. Hewat just missed with the conversion and my one half-time priority was to tell the two fellas who’d fled to the concourse bar that we’d scored!
At the start of the second half, everything was now falling into place and our way. The ref finally took a dim view of Treviso’s quite cute spoiling tactics and rightly binned a player for entering a maul from virtually the LI side.
Richards began a riotous personal second-half display with a mazy break from halfway into the Treviso 22. At last our backs demonstrated slick interchanging with the ball and Hewat was sent over, converting his own try for a 20-6 lead.
Treviso were to get the next score with another efficient penalty kick by Goosen for 20-9 as we went offside at the ruck, but the decision to take the kick, with their coach virtually running on to the pitch with the kicking tee to stop his players taking a quick tap, summed up Treviso’s attitude – damage limitation.
Catt orchestrated our fourth try with a cute chip and take of his own kick, Delon Armitage squeezing through a gap after more frantic pressure on the try-line, Hewat converting an easy kick for 27-9. The clock said 4.21pm, the moment we all could relax and at last enjoy the game, the crucial bonus point now safely under wraps.
Smithy relaxed too, wrapping up his playmaker Catt in cotton wool for transportation to Newport next week and sending on Paul Hodgson for his new career as emergency fly-half, Tagicakibau also replacing the subdued Topsy Ojo.
A lovely huge miss-pass, couldn’t see if it was Dodge or someone else, created the fifth try, putting Hewat through the defence and allowing De Vedia to take the scoring pass. Hewat unluckily hit the post for 32-9, henceforth condemning him to some kicking yips late on.
Steffon Armitage replaced his big brother at centre, heralding another phalanx of subs coming on, Skuse for Murphy, Thorpe for JML and Hudson for Kennedy. But there was no disruption to the flow as this time some fancy flick passes sent Steffon bulleting over the line, Hewat strangely shooting the conversion wide, 37-9.
Richards was announced as man of the match and capped his second half full of livewire running with a superb individual try, ghosting and dummying past some admittedly tired tackling. Hewat skewed a simple kick wide, leaving him a concentrated week of kicking practice ahead you’d think given his 3 from 8 stats.
So, 42-9. A fun second-half full of attacking play that alas will probably be entirely irrelevant to the kind of game that will confront us as we enter the Dragon’s den next week for a huge, huge encounter. Northampton’s spawny progress last season shows us that a win next week and another 5-pointer against Treviso might be good enough to put us in the quarters, even if we drop both Perpignan games, not something we should be relying on of course, but it underlines just how key even a narrow win would be next week.
So what shape are we in? Well, someone in authority gave the MOTM to Richards. Second-half yes, lovely stuff, but too much of his play in the first half was flawed, wild passing and some poor options to get frequently buried under Treviso forwards rather than shift the ball to team-mates in space. More of that next week and the Welsh will not be so generous in giving us second-chances, or twenty-second chances as we got against Treviso. Remember the Dragons have rather too many of those players for my liking who gave us a stuffing when they played in the Pontypridd shirt a few years ago.
Catt recovered his poise well from a loose start and was a plus for us, not at his vintage best but a beacon of hope for next week. Our scrum did OK, but was messed about a bit early on, lineout was generally alright but some loose stuff we can’t afford against the Dragons. Danaher was also very solid in the problem position in recent times for us of openside.
JML had an excellent return to the shirt and would be my choice for MOTM, closely followed by Mapasua, these two ran through brick walls for us in this game, and while it would be nice to go round them occasionally, with our backs failing to consistently conjure the accuracy to do that in the first half, it was these two that summed up our iron will to impose ourselves on Treviso in that critical period, the “real” part of the game rather than the candy-floss stuff in the final quarter that Richards showboated through.
As to the current strength of Italian club rugby, we know it’s in a down cycle and we know that Treviso are a long way from the level of a few years ago when they beat Quins home and away in this competition. But I am holding judgment on declaring them completely subprime, it was interesting for example that Viadana were giving the rich kids of Biarritz a tough game at the same time as ours today. More evidence required.
Two contrasting reactions sum up the debate – a couple of stalwarts sitting in front of me in the Lower West got up and headed for their half-time drink in the concourse bars TEN minutes early, so disgusted where they at our mounting error rate. Meanwhile, the guy just behind me watching his first ever London Irish game sat their enthralled - and later pronounced himself “amazed” at the high quality of our performance after we wrapped up the seven-try win.
The new guy certainly had the benefit of not feeling those peculiar pre-match nerves affecting us stalwarts, brought on by our fitfully inconsistent performances this season. The groans heard around the stadium in the first half were of course an echo emerging from that abysmal Quins game last time out, our patience with a misfiring London Irish team understandably low.
Smithy was unapologetic about targeting the Treviso game for his “Big Guns” in his match programme preview – and I think our main man has it spot on. The eye-opening facet of his selection was the pairing of our two England World Cup players at half-back, the expectation that they would supply the decision-making accuracy and class for a team cruelly denied the key services of Shane Geraghty once more.
This was the expectation – how would the reality fare?
Certainly, early on, expectations were not fulfilled. Catty took the rather odd strategic decision to have us playing virtually all the opening exchanges of the game inside our own half, with frequent devil-may-care Barbarians-style rugby deep inside our 22. Brave, undoubtedly, but as for settling the frayed nerves of long-suffering Irish fans, heart-attack stuff.
The penny began to drop when our over-elaborate play gifted the Treviso team an interception. Thankfully, the guy we saw sprinting towards our try-line turned out to be a fat Italian prop. De Vedia was able to avoid early blushes by mopping up Fatty’s kick and chase. The surrender of field position however did eventually cost us points when a LI player was penalised for going off his feet inside our own half, and the impressive boot of South African Goosen gave Treviso a 0-3 lead.
Irish repaired the damage straight away, opportunistic work at the restart by Danaher grabbing a loose tap-back and setting up Richards for a sniping run, and he in turn milked a not rolling away penalty for Hewat to tie it up at 3-3.
From this point, we took an iron grip of the game, albeit one often undermined by a stray pass, a wrong decision or an over-ambitious offload. Treviso to their credit were making some inroads disrupting our scrum and our line-out was also not up to its usual high standards.
But we stayed on the front foot thanks to some eye-catching individual displays, notably from Leguizamon and Mapasua. It was the latter’s blockbusting ball-carry to near the Treviso try line that forced another penalty and 5-yard lineout. Our forwards did their stuff and drove JML over for our opening try midway through the first half, an early enough score to at last start perking up a nervily quiet home crowd.
Hewat missed the wide-angle conversion and Goosen shortly after showed how it should be done with a fantastic wide kick from close on 50 metres that cut our lead to 8-6, after we had been penalised for entering a maul from the side.
Some collective doubts crept back. While we attacked the Treviso line incessantly, swinging the ball in the three-quarters first to the left, then to the right, all the good work was often undermined by a poor decision. De Vedia made a loose offload in the corner to snuff out one chance. Then Richards maddeningly ran up the blind alley of the Treviso pack with players free outside. And then, to cap it all, JML attempted a bizarre drop goal from about 12 yards out that skewed horribly wide. Head in hands time everywhere in the stadium, the fellas in front of me headed to the bar cursing our incompetence.
This 10-minute period up to half-time turned out to be the most crucial of the game. If our heads had dropped at these mistakes and Treviso had gone in at half-time in touching distance, low confidence could have paralysed our second-half effort. As it was, thankfully we gritted our teeth and dug in. A fine Delon Armitage break once again gave us field position near the Treviso line.
But then Welsh ref Tim Hayes seemed to turn against us when he ignored one of the most garish sinbin-level offsides you’ll ever see, a Treviso player running round behind Richards while the ball was still in the ruck. Still, we kept ploughing away at their tryline and finally we succeeded with another scrambled close-range try, with Richards seemingly attempting another fruitless mis-match against the Treviso pack, but the ref signalling a try and Dan Murphy emerging with the ball at the bottom of the pile of bodies.
This was an absolutely crucial score before half-time – it only gave us a 13-6 lead but it was the turning point of the game, the moment that finally saw Treviso psychologically blink. Hewat just missed with the conversion and my one half-time priority was to tell the two fellas who’d fled to the concourse bar that we’d scored!
At the start of the second half, everything was now falling into place and our way. The ref finally took a dim view of Treviso’s quite cute spoiling tactics and rightly binned a player for entering a maul from virtually the LI side.
Richards began a riotous personal second-half display with a mazy break from halfway into the Treviso 22. At last our backs demonstrated slick interchanging with the ball and Hewat was sent over, converting his own try for a 20-6 lead.
Treviso were to get the next score with another efficient penalty kick by Goosen for 20-9 as we went offside at the ruck, but the decision to take the kick, with their coach virtually running on to the pitch with the kicking tee to stop his players taking a quick tap, summed up Treviso’s attitude – damage limitation.
Catt orchestrated our fourth try with a cute chip and take of his own kick, Delon Armitage squeezing through a gap after more frantic pressure on the try-line, Hewat converting an easy kick for 27-9. The clock said 4.21pm, the moment we all could relax and at last enjoy the game, the crucial bonus point now safely under wraps.
Smithy relaxed too, wrapping up his playmaker Catt in cotton wool for transportation to Newport next week and sending on Paul Hodgson for his new career as emergency fly-half, Tagicakibau also replacing the subdued Topsy Ojo.
A lovely huge miss-pass, couldn’t see if it was Dodge or someone else, created the fifth try, putting Hewat through the defence and allowing De Vedia to take the scoring pass. Hewat unluckily hit the post for 32-9, henceforth condemning him to some kicking yips late on.
Steffon Armitage replaced his big brother at centre, heralding another phalanx of subs coming on, Skuse for Murphy, Thorpe for JML and Hudson for Kennedy. But there was no disruption to the flow as this time some fancy flick passes sent Steffon bulleting over the line, Hewat strangely shooting the conversion wide, 37-9.
Richards was announced as man of the match and capped his second half full of livewire running with a superb individual try, ghosting and dummying past some admittedly tired tackling. Hewat skewed a simple kick wide, leaving him a concentrated week of kicking practice ahead you’d think given his 3 from 8 stats.
So, 42-9. A fun second-half full of attacking play that alas will probably be entirely irrelevant to the kind of game that will confront us as we enter the Dragon’s den next week for a huge, huge encounter. Northampton’s spawny progress last season shows us that a win next week and another 5-pointer against Treviso might be good enough to put us in the quarters, even if we drop both Perpignan games, not something we should be relying on of course, but it underlines just how key even a narrow win would be next week.
So what shape are we in? Well, someone in authority gave the MOTM to Richards. Second-half yes, lovely stuff, but too much of his play in the first half was flawed, wild passing and some poor options to get frequently buried under Treviso forwards rather than shift the ball to team-mates in space. More of that next week and the Welsh will not be so generous in giving us second-chances, or twenty-second chances as we got against Treviso. Remember the Dragons have rather too many of those players for my liking who gave us a stuffing when they played in the Pontypridd shirt a few years ago.
Catt recovered his poise well from a loose start and was a plus for us, not at his vintage best but a beacon of hope for next week. Our scrum did OK, but was messed about a bit early on, lineout was generally alright but some loose stuff we can’t afford against the Dragons. Danaher was also very solid in the problem position in recent times for us of openside.
JML had an excellent return to the shirt and would be my choice for MOTM, closely followed by Mapasua, these two ran through brick walls for us in this game, and while it would be nice to go round them occasionally, with our backs failing to consistently conjure the accuracy to do that in the first half, it was these two that summed up our iron will to impose ourselves on Treviso in that critical period, the “real” part of the game rather than the candy-floss stuff in the final quarter that Richards showboated through.
As to the current strength of Italian club rugby, we know it’s in a down cycle and we know that Treviso are a long way from the level of a few years ago when they beat Quins home and away in this competition. But I am holding judgment on declaring them completely subprime, it was interesting for example that Viadana were giving the rich kids of Biarritz a tough game at the same time as ours today. More evidence required.
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