Haze - back soon.

By Cherry Picker
January 28 2009

With a string of inconsistent results and performances behind them as the second half of the season gathers pace, Gloucester badly need to stop the rot when they come up against a talented London Irish side at Kingsholm this weekend. And if that isn’t enough to inspire a good Glaws performance, how about this – Irish 42, Glaws 12. That result just before Christmas was the first in a run of four defeats in the last six games, three of them in the last three. Yet before that damaging run Glaws had won seven games on the bounce.Statistics are, of course, about as interesting as Bath’s bother over the Rec, but those results do underline how Glaws have lost their way in recent games, albeit it mostly against far stronger teams than many of those they played in their seven wins.Training this week has been disrupted by the fact that nine players have been taking part in international training, and of course the Kingsholm injury list isn’t getting much shorter. The good news on that front is that Andy Hazell could be back in the back row at the weekend.
With the Six Nations due to start in just over a week, the strenght in depth of every team in the Guinness premiership is going to be put to the test, and it could even be said that the four clubs who will be taking part in the end-of-season play-offs could largely be decided during the next six weeks.Glaws coach Dean Ryan told the Citizen: "That's life. We've got 13 front line players not playing. If that wasn't the case, then three players with England wouldn't have been a drastic problem."But then you add the amount of injuries and forced absences."We've got to get on and play it. The Premiership's played over nine months for that reason and we've got to get out and try and get a result this weekend with who we've got available."The Heineken Cup is a different tournament and we've got to accept that we didn't have all our best players, we didn't play our best rugby and we didn't suit those particular conditions."But the Premiership is about nine months, about being there at the end and about having people at the end that can finish it off. At the moment, we're a long way from that."Does that last sentence mean he’s written off Gloucester’s chances of GP success this season?Let’s hope not. 

Make or break time for Gloucester

Discussion started by Shedloads (IP Logged), 28/01/2009 12:33

Shedloads
28/01/2009 12:33

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