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There's always next year


By BerkshireBasedFan
January 18 2016

A famous philosopher once wrote “Everything in life is constant and predictable – apart from London Irish’s team selection for the European Challenge Cup”

This was the very question I asked myself in the run up to the match versus Grenoble. Do we rest our key players for the Aviva Premiership and give the young bucks a chance to shine? Or do we persevere with our first choice squad and attempt to get another rousing home victory? These questions are only compounded by the fact that French teams traditionally put out a weak away team, yet Grenoble find themselves in the position of leading the table, and thus qualification to the quarter finals is a very realistic proposition for them.

These questions were duly answered at 12 o’clock on Friday, when the team sheet was released. 11 changes to the starting line-up, with a number of players promoted from the bench, a few from the academy given the chance to shine, and a couple of players who had been working hard in training given the opportunity to show off their stuff at the MadStad.


The Match


The match itself started promisingly, with two early penalties courtesy of Shane Geraghty either side of a pair for the Grenoble kicker Jonathan Wisniewski. Some kicking from both sides was then followed by a rolling maul from a Grenoble lineout, which sucked our defenders in and enabled the away team to go over for a converted try in the corner. Another Grenoble score occurred soon after, when centre Nigel Hunt smashed over our try line from short range. Some strong play by Irish then resulted in a huge amount of territory and possession, which they were very unlucky not to convert into points on the scoreboard, even after Grenoble had their captain sin-binned for skulduggery in the lineout. Halftime Score: Irish 6 Grenoble 21.

Play resumed after a surprisingly entertaining halftime game of catch 22 (whoever tackled digger, I applaud you) followed by a rousing rendition of Sweet Caroline.

The second half unfortunately started similarly to the first half, with Grenoble putting through an excellent grubber kick to the Irish 5m line, followed by a try due to Irish overthrowing the lineout. At 6-28 down the game could no longer be won for Irish, but Grenoble still were hunting the try that would net them a crucial bonus point. Irish defended valiantly, and were successful in keeping Grenoble off the line for much of the half, and succeeded in netting a try 5 minutes from time due to some flowing backs play. Shane Geraghty duly converted, and with the score at 13-28, Irish turned the screw on Grenoble. Some more good passing from the backs led the ball from one side of the field to the other, culminating in Alex Lewington diving over for the score in the 81st minute in the north-eastern corner. Geraghty failed to convert, leaving the final score at 18-28 in favour of Grenoble.


Honourable mentions


Ollie Curry impressed as lock, and I hope that the club retain him and allow him to develop with the tutorage of Matt Symons and Bob Casey.

Alex Lewington continues to be a standout player, and you could see him getting visibly frustrated when other team members squandered chances. I sorely hope we retain him for next season, as if we lose him we will find ourselves with a big hole to fill.

Jimmy Stevens had an excellent impact off the bench, clearly pouncing on his chance to shine after Tom Cruse made one error too many in the lineout. He was excellent in the loose and shored up our scrum as well.

Darren Allinson made some great runs when he came on for the injured Scott Steele, and seems to galvanise our backs into action whenever he plays – in my mind he is deserving of more game time than Scott Steele.

Topsy Ojo - for all that we bemoan of him compared to Shaun Maitland, showed some spark in attack, and made a number of darting runs. However his pace that is clearly starting to go, and once again when it came to defending grubber kicks, he showed some defensive frailties.

Leo Halavatau clearly has not lost any of his scrummaging ability, thought he does seem to have lost his neck – has anyone seen it?


Where to from here?


We may be out of Europe, but is this really the end of the world? As some people have pointed out, the quarter final, of which we would have most likely been playing away from home, is the week before our trip to Newcastle. Would we really want a tired team having to make two difficult and also important away trips in the same number of weeks?

My view is this – whilst no one wants to lose, in a way this loss now allows us to fully focus on our league form of which we have a number of important games coming up. I truly believe that our team didn’t perform as badly as some people might say, yes we were 6-28 down at one point, and we did lose by 10 points in the end, but we were playing a full strength French team, who were bigger and more physical than us. One of their tries was a result of an overthrown lineout, and perhaps we could have salvaged a LBP if this hadn’t had happened. Playing two Fly Halves also didn’t help our cause, and in my mind perhaps we should have had TBC starting at F/H with Dom Waldouck at Centre instead of on the bench.

At the end of the day our 2nd team lost to Grenoble’s 1st team – can we really be all that disappointed with the loss?

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There's always next year
Discussion started by The Craic www.londonirish.org , 18/01/2016 11:42
The Craic www.londonirish.org
18/01/2016 11:42
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