Is a top 6 finish a reality, and how do things look compared with relegation year?

John Kingston said after the Saint game that Quins would not be relegated. A brave claim, but is it any more fool-hardy than Mark Evans declaration back in March 2005 that 37 points were sufficient to avoid relegation? After a poor start last September, without a win, Quins have managed to stay ahead of the points target needed to finish in 11^th position in the GP but have never managed to keep up with the points needed to achieve the 6^th place threshold (compare the final column in the Roadmap Table below with the totals in the 11^th and 6^th place columns).

Leeds beating Sale has certainly bunched up the bottom three places and left them only 4 points behind Quins on Friday night. Our head coach’s take on this was that Sale have left the door open for Quins to take the 6^th GP place – if only it were a 2 horse race!!!

By last Sunday the bottom six looked like this:

On the equivalent Sunday back in January (29^th) 2005 the table looked like this:

The thing to note is how similar both tables look in terms of the points for each position, and probably demonstrates, like 2005, that deciding the relegation place is likely to go down to the wire. Can John Kingston be so certain about avoiding relegation? The short answer is no……..the bottom 5 in 2005 were all caught up in a dog-fight until Jeremy Staunton missed the very last kick of the season. The conclusion to be drawn is that 40 points spell safety not the coach’s optimisms..…and we are still waiting for that run of wins JK also promised before Christmas.

The Roadmap Table (which was worked out before the start of the season) is based on the average points gained over the 11 years of the GP for 1^st, 4^th, 6^th and 11^th place finishes and what Quins would be expected to do given their finish last season.

Quins now have 28 points (see ‘Actual’ in last column – the figure in brackets is the points they gained in the match for that round)

To finish 4^th Quins must look at reaching 62 points – a shortfall of 34 points. This means either 8 wins out of the 8 remaining games with 2 bps, or 7 wins out of 8 with 6 bps. JK was stating the blinding obvious when he said last weekend that a play-off position was probably out of reach.

To finish 6^th Quins will probably need a total of 55 points at the end of the season – a shortfall of 27 points. Or, put another way – they have to win 6 of their last 8 games with 3 bonus points from anywhere. Is this possible? Yes, but realistically it is still a very tall order.

There are 4 home and 4 away games left. The easier bit being the home games where Quins play three perennial bottom finishers – Leeds, Wuzz and Falcons. The fourth is against Sale, last game of the season – and it could be another Jeremy moment in a number of ways – but very winnable despite the Sharks being a bogey team this year. The difficult bit is the away games are against teams that are all higher in the GP – Irish, Bath, Sarries and Leicester.

Nothing is impossible but on current form Quins are (statistically) most likely to finish 8^th or 9^th.  The next two games will give a clear indication of the direction Quins are heading.

Lots still to look forward to and enjoy ...

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