By Leipziger
March 22 2007

The Premiership will level out this weekend with re-arranged matches played, including the Falcons trip to Gloucester that was fogged off at Christmas. It is the first of two meetings with the Kingsholm side in the next month. One of the top sides in the first half of the season, Gloucester’s Premiership challenge three defeats since Christmas have seen them leapfrogged by Leicester who now lead the Cherry and Whites by three points at the top of the table. However, they have won their last four matches at home to Worcester 33-19, Leicester 28-24 and Harlequins 34-25 and, interspersed in their, at Northampton 5-7.

Gloucester’s strength builds from a strong and powerful pack containing the likes of French front-rowers Christian Califano, Olivier Azam and Patrice Collazo, lock Alex Brown (one of the ten most influential players in Premiership history!), and Premiership player of the year in 2003 Jake Boer. Adam Balding and the skillful James Forrester and Andy Hazell can also be called upon in the back row.

Behind the scrum, is a mixture of Mike Tindall’s power, James Bailey and Iain Balshaw’s pace and James Simpson-Daniel’s creativity. These complement the youth of Ryan Lamb and new England stars Ryan Lamb and Olly Morgan. And let us not forget England scrum-half Peter Richards and kicking machine Ludovic Mercier.

Tindall and Morgan were injured in the Six Nations, although Allen, Lamb and Simpson-Daniel were all in the team which beat Harlequins 34-25 at Kingsholm on Saturday. James Bailey, Nick Wood, James Forrester and Mark Foster secured the bonus point which keeps Gloucester in the playoff hunt, despite a late Quins rally.

Gloucester have been one of our bogey sides in recent seasons, with us being without a win in the south-western town (despite going heart-breakingly close in April 2003 when the hosts came back from 0-20 down to win 25-23 with the last play of the game) since the late 1990s.

Indeed, at home it isn’t much better with Gloucester being unbeaten at Kingston Park outside of international periods since April 2000. Our last win was in October 2003, during the World Cup.

This fixture last season, on Bonfire Night, saw captain-for-the-day Jonny Wilkinson of England score fifteen of his side’s twenty points, with a try, two conversions and two penalties. Cory Harris scored the other try, but it was to no avail as scores from Forrester, Richards and the boot of Mercier set up a 27-20 home win. The Falcons’ last win at Kingsholm was the controversial 27-29 win of April 1998, which was such a huge step towards winning the Championship.

With Jonny Wilkinson back, we will revert to the roaming three-quarter line which was last seen (not for the last time, unfortunately) at Irish with Tait, Noon and Flood all in the side. Andy Perry returns from injury to the bench.

15 Matthew Burke (captain)
14 Tom May
13 Mathew Tait
12 Jamie Noon
11 Toby Flood
10 Jonny Wilkinson
9 James Grindal

1 Joe McDonnell
2 Matt Thompson
3 Micky Ward
4 Mark Sorenson
5 Jason Oakes
6 Geoff Parling
7 Ben Woods
8 Brent Wilson

Replacements:
Jon Golding
Andy Long
Andy Perry
Andy Buist
John Rudd
Lee Dickson
Loki Crichton