By Leipziger
December 20 2007

On Sunday Kingston Park hosts its first Premiership match for over two months when the tractor boys from Gloucester come north just before Christmas. Ironically, our last match before Christmas last year should have been at Kingsholm, so lets hope this one isn’t fogged off too.

The table-topping Cherry n Whites have only lost one match at KP on a non-international weekend since 2000, that being in April when Toby Flood produced a masterful performance to orchestrate a 19-12 win for the Falcons.  Noah scored the only try of the night plus two late penalties to add to eight points from Jonny Wilkinson’s boot.

 

Our previous wins before that had been a 42-22 destruction of Gloucester in October 2003, with a Michael Stephenson (now playing for their arch-rivals Bath) hat-trick and 18-16 in November 2001.  This match tends to be tight, with less than seven points normally separating the teams and that 27-27 draw in the snow of February 2005.

 

Gloucester are currently top of the Premiership, a point ahead of Bath, courtesy of a bonus point gained in their solitary league defeat of the season at London Irish in October.  Apart from that, away wins have been gained at Leeds, Saracens and Leicester.

 

Their last league outing four weeks ago was against Harlequins at Kingsholm, when our visitors overturned a 13-25 half-time lead to sneak the points 27-25 thanks to second half tries from Mike Tindall and Lesley Vainikolo.

 

After joining Gloucester from Bradford RL in the summer, Vainikolo announced himself with a bang at Headingley with five tries, however Quins was his first league appearance since September.  He has joined one of Europe’s top backlines which combines the speed of James Bailey, James Simpson-Daniel and Iain Balshaw and the power of Mike Tindall and Anthony Allen with quality half-backs in Gareth Cooper and Ryan Lamb, with plenty more in reserve.

 

In the forwards, Scottish prop Alasdair Strokosch has recently signed a new contract to keep him in a pack featuring back-rowers Andy Hazell and James Forrester, both of whom are continually ignored by England despite seemingly good form, Italian Marco Bortolami, French props Christian Califano and Patrice Collazo and up-and-coming prop Nick Wood, all of whom can pack down with international hookers Olivier Azam and Andy Titterell.

 

And lets not forget one of the ten most influential players in Premiership history, Alex Brown.

 

In the cups recently, Gloucester have taken the Heineken Cup by storm with four wins in a group containing Ulster, Ospreys and Bourgoin.  An away win at Ravenhill is certainly not to be sniffed at, whilst the Ospreys’ hopes were hit by a defeat at Kingsholm.  The last two weekends saw the south-westerners put over 80 points on their French opponents.

 

Overall, Gloucs come north unbeaten in eight, with seven successive victories since our controversial and heart-stopping meeting at Kingsholm in the LW Friendly Cup (as Wasps’ ticket office call it).  Who will ever forget Tom May’s knock-on in the late stages?  Or the inexplicable retaken lineout, or penalty moving forward ten yards when it was Gloucester who had knocked on?

 

The Falcons give a Premiership debut to Carl Hayman, whilst Toby Flood returns to the starting lineup with Mathew Tait at full-back:

15 Mathew Tait
14 Tom May
13 Jamie Noon (captain)
12 Toby Flood
11 John Rudd
10 Jonny Wilkinson
9 Lee Dickson
1 Jon Golding
2 Matt Thompson
3 Carl Hayman
4 Andy Perry
5 Mark Sorenson
6 Geoff Parling
7 Ben Woods
8 Russell Winter

Replacements:
16 Andy Long
17 David Wilson
18 Sean Tomes
19 Brent Wilson
20 James Grindal
21 Tim Visser
22 Ollie Phillips

 In our last home game of 2007, we have the chance to ensure Bath will forever be the only team to have won at KP this year.  Lets all get behind the lads, hope for a repeat of the Sale match at the start of the season and all have an early Christmas present!