By Mark H
January 22 2004

COYSDC's own Mark H brings you this weeks match preview of Saints crucial pool four trip to the french side Agen. Three sides can still qualify from this group and Northampton face a tough test against a team who rarely lose at home. Mark's not hopeful but knows you can never write those Saints off! It’s a week for eight words to sum up the task ahead, four of mine, and four from one of the main protagonists on Friday night. I’ll start with the four uttered by Steve Thompson on Wednesday afternoon, when as part of doing some publicity for Sky Sports for both the Agen game on Friday and some football match on Sunday, he was asked by a friend what he though of the challenge ahead.

“We’ve got to win”

From a confidence perspective, and to try and make the job of qualifying from this pool of piranhas easier, he’s got it spot on, as there is no doubt that four (or even five) points will really throw a gauntlet down to Llanelli. From a qualifying perspective, it’s not out of the question for Saints to pick up nothing from Friday but still win the pool, however, should Agen score four tries and Saints fail to pick up a point then it will be the French team who will be in pole position to take the quarter final spot.

If Saints manage to grab a bonus point (and working on Agen failing to get their four tries), then it will be a case of beating the Scarlets by more than seven points to grab the pool. If Saints can pick up any more than a point, then a simple win over the Scarlets may be enough to go through, and possibly take a home quarter final with it.

It ain’t going to be easy though. Agen, a town of the comparative size of Newbury, is rugby daft, and the sort of place where if you wear the shirt and don’t perform on a weekend, then you let the other half do the shopping for the following week. The locals are not afraid to tell their players if they’ve had a bad game, which probably accounts somewhat for their phenomenal home record of one defeat in the last fifty three games - they’re scared of losing.

Of course, it also helps if you’ve got a pack of monsters, and backs fleet of foot, and they’ve got them both. If anyone didn’t know Jean-Jacques Crenca, they will have done after his brief appearance at the Gardens, and the sheer stupidity of his putting his head in Wally’s face directly in front of the referee (more stupidity on Friday night, please!). If anyone didn’t realise that Pepito Elhorga is one of the most exciting full backs in European rugby, let alone French, then his skill with both ball in hand and from his feet would clarify that (from a Saintly point of view, let’s hope that he is still out injured). And they’re just two out of twenty two that we have to worry about.

With the conditions underfoot sure to be on the damp side (but hopefully nothing as bad as the conditions in the Stade Armandie last Saturday), then the main skill may well be keeping hands on the ball. It could well be the side that shows the greater power that triumphs in the end, so on Wednesday afternoon, the following twenty two names emerged from Smudge Central:-

15 Bruce Reihana
14 Mark Tucker
13 Chris Hyndman
12 John Leslie (captain)
11 Ben Cohen
10 Paul Grayson
9 Mark Robinson
1 Tom Smith
2 Steve Thompson
3 Robbie Morris
4 Matt Lord
5 Mark Connors
6 Andrew Blowers
7 Darren Fox
8 Grant Seely

16 Dan Richmond
17 Chris Budgen
18 Jon Phillips
19 Mark Soden
20 Johnny Howard
21 Shane Drahm
22 Oriol Ripol

So just the one change then, Chris Hyndman returning after his migraine problems in place of Oriol Ripol, with Tucks moving to the wing. It looks just about as big a line up as is available, with Daws and Bealer absent through injury, but the big test will come in the battle ahead on a muddy foreign field. Never more has the band of brothers analogy been as appropriate as it is this weekend.

No news on the Agen line up as yet, but having a trawl around their message board, even my limited knowledge of French can translate that the supporters are very pleased that Daws is missing, and that to miss a world cup winner would be a big hole in the Saints lineup. Do we tell them about this useful Kiwi youngster called Sharky something that is in his place, or keep the little secret to ourselves?

Referee for Friday is Ireland’s Alan Lewis, taking charge of his 24th European Cup game. Now it’s an open secret that I am not his biggest fan, and certain people on this board will be glad they’re not there on Friday so they don’t have to put up with me moaning about him. He took charge of two Saints games last season, the home win against Biarritz and the ultimately disappointing defeat in Toulouse. He is definitely one of the fussier referees, which may help Saints, if the potentially greater power of the Agen pack can be diminished. Indeed, Smudger himself acknowledges that it’s in the eight that the game will ultimately be decided:-

“No-one is expecting us to go over there and deal with their pack - they are saying we will get munched up - and we know we have to win that battle up front…we are going to have to be spot on mentally and physically to pull it off.”

The home game ended 25-10 to Saints, with Ben’s hat-trick being the highlight. I’d take a repeat of that score, but French teams at home are very different to French teams on foreign soil. One defeat in 53 games is a great record, but another team had no defeats in 57 games, and Saints won there on a rainy night in front of the Sky cameras. Another rainy night, another great record broken, another memorable Saints win?

Do I have to make a prediction? Let’s just say that I’m not hopeful, which brings me onto the other four words to sum up the task ahead. This time, they come not from a player, or a coach, or a chairman. These come from a supporter who’s just typed all this out and speaks for all those like-minded souls.

Prove the doubters wrong,