London Irish 15 Worcester 20

Every Irish fan in the disappointing crowd of just over 7K was expecting a home win. Surely the start of something big under the new antipodean omnipresence. Surely another free flowing game and more thrilling tries to match those at Twickenham!! Well, those “brutal” Worcester forwards had something to say about that!

Worcester yesterday, reminded me of the Irish three or four years ago, A very good pack in the tight, solid recycling, and a match winning kicker. Winning ugly, but winning. Irish have now moved far away from that game plan, and on yesterdays evidence it still need some time to get all the bits and pieces together.

The game started brightly enough, with Wuss mounting a promising attack, and Irish defending stoutly, then showing us the ambition they have to play the wide game, coming straight back and attacking Wuss with lots of wide passing movements. In the early exchanges, as in the remainder of the game, there were two standouts. Rod (Spenda) Penney, and Olivier (Charly) Magne. Irish were attacking from everywhere, and it looked likely to cause an avalanche of tries. Interesting then that Irish first try came from a Worcester mistake. Wuss won a scrum on about their own 22, a regulation pass to Brown for the clearance, but he dropped it. Kieron Dawson was first to the scene, and hacked through for Stan the man to touch down. (Where did he come from?). Barry added the extras. 7 – 0

Everything looked rosy in Charlies (new) garden, and what we all expected was unfolding. Even now though, Wuss’ pack was absolutely dominant at scrum time, and Irish were shunted backwards time and time again. Phil Murphy did a great job of cleaning up bad ball, and Willis showed just why a scrummy needs such quick hands. The lineout was a different matter, and Irish disrupted and stole lots of Wuss ball. Robby Russell left the field early to be replaced by Flav, and this disrupted the Irish lineout a little as well. Overall though the Lineout area was a big win for Irish against the most feared lineout in the GP.

After about 20 minutes there was a big event in the game. Kieron Dawson was laying all over a wuss ruck, and should have been penalised, he wasn’t and one of the Wuss props took the law into his own hands and stamped on Awesomes head, the ref didn’t see it and took the advice of his touch judge, who sadly bottled. Instead of the deserved red card (And lengthy ban according to the new disciplinary code) he received a yellow. Awesome had to go off for some needlework and was replaced by Gussy. Soon afterwards (Sex Machine) James Brown left the pitch for Wuss, injured and was replaced by Shane Drahm. For me this was a big turning point in the game. Drahm was a much bigger threat than Brown and got all the vital kicks which would eventually win the game.

Within a few Minutes, and still down to 7 forwards Wuss were level. A big old agricultural forward drive ended with a try for Tony Windo. Drahm added the extras to make the score 7 - 7 .

Irish responded immediately. Mounting an attack from a couple of rucks in midfield. The ball ended up in Magnes hands tight to the touchline and with Stan inside him. he chose the chip rather than the pass, and chose correctly, Stan raced through to touch down the 2nd try. Bazza missed the conversion and it was 12 – 7 to Irish. Bfore the end of the half, Drahm slotted a drop goal for Wuss and Irish got another penalty which Barry converted to end the half at Irish 15 – Worcester 10.

The 2nd Half was a bit of a non event. Irish started pretty well, but then two things happened that seemed to knock the stuffing out of them. First Awesome Dawson dropped the ball over the line having been put through by Penney, the ref first signalled the try but then took his TJ’s advice to (correctly) disallow it. The next incident had the LI crowd howling. The Worcester wing Hylton was through on Delon, right in front of the drummers, and, running out of support and options decided to chip the fullback and run straight into him. He then got up looking sheepish but noticed that the touch judge had his flag out, so he went down and wriggled like a footballer. The Ref and TJ conversed and Delon was (wrongly) sent to the bin. The Worcester players giggled, and the Irish fans booed. No points were scored during Delons absence, but from that point onwards nothing seemed to go right.

The rest of the half up to the 78th minute was just plain dull. Worcester dominated the scrums and Irish dominated everything else, but could just not quite get it all right. Then with just a couple of minutes of normal time left. Wuss were awarded a penalty in front of the posts. Sanderson asked for the scrum, and Irish turned it going backwards, so the ref (correctly) awarded the scrum to Wuss again. The same thing happened, but this time Mr. Fox Mysteriously awarded a penalty try. All I can imagine is that Wuss were denied a certain try from some Irish skuldugerry, because it was far too early to award one for continuous infringement. Anyway, Drahm added the extras and it was suddenly a two point lead for Wuss at 15 – 17.

As it later proved, there was loads of time left, but Irish panicked at the restart, and Wuss ended up straight back at our end in a great position and Drahm landed the DG to mean that Irish needed a converted try to win it.

The boys huffed and puffed, set up several good Mauls close to the Worcester line, all of which were brought down illegally. Mr. Fox had obviously warned Wuss, because after the 3rd penalty he dispatched one of them to the bin. But then he lost his nerve. There were two subsequent penalties, each of which should have been accompanied by a yellow cards but didn’t, and the match ended with irish knocking on, to the delight of the Wuss players and supporters, and the game ended Irish 15 – Worcester 20.

So what can we make of all this??

Well Worcester look like a one trick pony. But what a great trick!! Just about the best scrummaging unit that I have seen for some time. Irish were dominant in just about every other phase of the game but lost.

This reminded me a lot of England at the last World cup. Big strong pack, and take all your scoring opportunities. In the final analysis it was Drahms (Wilkinsons) drop goal which won the game. Good luck to them. Rugby is as much about forwards as it is about dashing backs, and yesterday Wuss proved it.

Irish have clearly completely changed their playing style, and on this evidence, we are going to have a roller coaster season. Big highs and fairly depressing lows. We need to keep our heads much more, and not run EVERYTHING.
Stand out performances from our back row, and from Rod Penney, and a couple of worrying injuries in Robby Russell and Delon Armitage.
WE are fourth in the table, and I for one cannot wait to get up the motorway on Friday. Stick around folks, this season, anything could happen.

View a Printer Friendly version of this Story.

Bookmark or share this story with:

• Digg
• Delicious
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon