By Chris Chaplin
December 16 2003

That is, I expect, what the Saints’ faithful will be crying out for on Saturday when Tigers make their annual visit to Franklins Gardens and it won’t just be the finest ships’ rum that they’ll mean either!
Saints will without doubt be looking to emulate the feat of Bath, who have already beaten Tigers home and away and Sale who have also notched up two wins against us albeit as they were both at Welford Road AND in different competitions does that count as a double?

Both sides having negotiated the frying pan of losing key players to the World Cup and having had a brief respite when full squads were at home, if not universally available, they now find themselves in the fire merrily stoked by the RFU in their endless quest for supporters’ hard earned money.

At the time of my writing this preview Tigers will be losing Ollie Smith and Martin Corry to “an” England XVI while Daryl Gibson will be in the centre for the New Zealand Baa Baas (what or who are the New Zealand Barbarians anyway?). Down at Franklins Gardens they are even worse served by this farcical ersatz event with Grayson, Cohen and Thompson appearing with Corry as part of the actual cup winning squad while Mark Robinson has been dragooned into the Barbarians side.

Saints have fared considerably better in the first half of the season with his astute planning and purchasing enabling the intelligent Wayne Smith to see his side positioned in fourth place in the premiership on 31 points, just a point behind Wasps and London Irish who are in second and third places respectively. Tigers by comparison are six places and twelve points adrift down at tenth place and firmly in the basement with Saracens and Rotherham. But just a single point away from Leeds who are in ninth.

Is it not therefore surreal that here we have two of the biggest and best supported clubs in the premiership competing in a local a derby which could see one team end the day in second place in the league or the other begin an agonising climb back to respectability and yet both clubs and their supporters are again to be denied a true contest between full strength sides save for the vicissitudes of injury.

But that is what we have so what is the likely outcome?

Well both Saints and Tigers have had patchy starts to their Heineken Cup campaigns both putting the away losses at Llanelli and Paris behind them with good home wins against Agen and Gwent Dragons.

Saints have the loss of Thompson at hooker to contend with on Saturday yet if Dan Richmond plays as well as he did at Welford Road before being replaced by young Matt Miles late on I’m sure there’ll be few complaints from the home crowd.

Back from the trauma of playing for Scotland is the wonderful Tom Smith, who under the new Scotland management will have to leave Saints at the end of his current contract if he wishes to be considered for selection to the national side. He’ll be a big loss to Scotland!

International, British Lion and still one of the most exciting front row forwards in the game. He was what is now called a “modern” forward before they were invented as his ten tries from 35 premiership appearances bears ample witness. Always a threat in the loose, technically rock solid in the scrum, should be quite a contest up front and with Morris likely to replace Sturgess, who took a ten minute breather at Welford Road, this should be a real mini classic in the dark recesses of the front row.

Last time Saints stalwart Rob Hunter and Kiwi Matt Lord took on the young Deacon brothers and gave them a torrid time but this time things could be a little different but it will be interesting to see if the superb ex Queensland Red Mark Connors starts at lock or what is for me at least his best position at flanker. I wonder if Bath ever regret reneging on the deal that would have seen him in a blue and black shirt.

In the back row young Darren Fox seems to have secured his spot and if Connors starts at lock then I guess another stalwart, Grant Seely will get the other flankers spot with Mr Saintsman himself Andrew Blowers at #8. I suppose Blowers does have bad games, it’s just that I’ve yet to see one. How about giving me a treat Andrew by having a stinker on Saturday!?

With All Black Mark Robinson now off to that fairytale land of RFU quasi internationals the question is will Dawson be fit to start. Against Agen youngster Johnny Howard was on the bench covering Robinson but it’s hard to believe that Wayne Smith would have released Robinson if “Daws” was not back in contention.

Grayson is another player engaged in panto at Twickenham but with Shane Drahm having kicked Tigers to death with a personal haul of 19 points out of the 32 that his side scored at Welford Road you’ll excuse me tempering my relief at the England players’ absence.

Shamelessly targeted by Gloucester in the incident that, by going unpunished by referee Goodliffe, sparked the now infamous “Battle of Franklins Gardens” Drahm has probably been the find of the season for me, having been taken by coach Smith from a marginalized also ran at Bristol to the fine play-making fly-half and near faultless kicker, whether it be out of hand or from the tee, that we have seen being so influential in Saints’ success this season. Just goes to show what a good coach can do (qv: Andy Gomersall’s resurgence under Nigel Melville)

With Cohen practising cries of “look behind you” I expect to see that other superb player Bruce Reihana on the left wing. I believe that in my preview of the Welford Road encounter I marked this player as the danger man and how right I was with his first try that day being out of the very top drawer. Great in attack, robust and technically perfect in defence, exemplary in his support play what more could be asked of him?

Young Tucker has carefully worked himself into the starting line up these days and a much deserved accolade it is for this fine South African born centre. While I expect to see him again start on Saturday I wonder whether the experience and defensive prowess of kilted Kiwi John Leslie will be preferred to the sheer enthusiasm of another of Saints promising youngsters, Chris Hyndman. I’ll be wrong of course but given the changes forced upon Tigers in the centre I’d expect Saints to use the guile and experience of Leslie to expose any weakness in the new Tigers pairing.

On the right wing I’d expect to see veteran Jon Sleightholme but he seems to have been absent of late and anyway the speed of Spaniard Oriol Ripol may be a worthwhile option given the likely presence of Neil Baxter.

Full back? Who else? Nick Beal! Enough said!

Good enough for the double over Tigers? Certainly, but will it be so?

Like all Tigers supporters I was encouraged by the victory over Gwent Dragons who were without their chief play-maker and kicker, Lee Jarvis with the blond bomber, Percy Montgomery, looking unaccustomed and uncomfortable in the fly-half role.

The Gwent pack was in trouble from the off with Julian White regularly introducing his opponent to the Welford Road turf.

That said the Gwent pack had some good players in it’s midst but was not within a Leicestershire mile of being able to compete although they did defend stoutly if not often legally.

I think that even the most staunch of Saints supporters will concede that a front row of Rowntree, West and White ably assisted by multiple award winner Martin Johnson and lineout cracksman Ben Kay represents the most formidable front five in the premiership. Sadly in a Saints vs. Tigers matches reputation counts for little and awards, however well won and richly deserved, for even less and so I expect to see the Saints five competing for everything and metaphorically punching well above their weight.

It’ll be rugged but in all conscience I really can’t see Tigers being bested in the set pieces, always assuming of course that they stick to the policy adopted against Gwent and keep things simple and play to their banker jumpers. Any wayward throwing to the back of the line will see Blowers and Connors laying in wait for the unwary and there could be big trouble if those two break out, especially on turnover ball.

Once again Tigers back-row has been decimated but this time without the back up of Josh Kronfeld or Dan Lyle just Neil Back being available from Tigers’ international contingent. Octobers’ Playmate of the month (I have got that right haven’t I?) Adam Balding will doubtless join his skipper at #8 where I hope he’ll show more patience than he did against Gwent for if he doesn’t Blowers and Connors could make a mug of him which would be a shame as he’s heart’s in the right place but sometimes he just tries too hard and in trying to force the game makes silly errors.

Will Skinner will perhaps try his hand in the #6 shirt or if they’re fit Henry Tuilagi or Will Johnson may get the nod. Either way much will rest on Neil Back’s shoulders in the winning of ruck ball.

I hope against hope that Healey and Pez are left to develop their burgeoning partnership with the young Italy fly-half growing in confidence and clearly relishing the high class service that he’s finally getting. I would like to see him cut out so many frills and flounces from his game which would see them having greater impact when they are used but for me he still had his best game for Tigers so far last weekend.

The Tigers’ half-back pairing may be up against Dawson and Drahm and so this will not be a cake-walk by any stretch of the imagination but Oz will want to show how wrong Woodward was to prefer Dawson to him for the #9 berth in Australia so we could just see a virtuoso performance from our Austin which will hopefully enable Pez to keep Drahm on the back foot.

Centres? What centres? It’s a crying shame that both our centres, who are developing a really good partnership, have instead had to don their stage outfits for the Twickenham panto, let’s hope they don’t fall out over who’s to be the front and who’s to be the back of the horse!

In their stead probably Leon Lloyd will have to again curb his wingers’ talents, which he showed to fine effect last weekend and play at outside centre. I hope that we’ll see Glenn Gelderbloom inside him. We see too little of Gelders who rarely even gets a run as a replacement these days. If he plays we know he’ll not let the side down and against the likes of John Leslie the South African’s intelligent play could be worth it’s weight in Rand.

It’s hard to imagine Neil Baxter not starting at 14 after the impact he seems to make in every game, alright I know he sometimes gets it wrong but he is just the kind of rocket propelled danger man that Tigers need, the only caveat is that he’ll be having to confront Reihana who successfully shook of Holtby last time, so the ex league player will need to be at his defensive best. Partnering him on the other wing I suspect we’ll see the return of Fred., and must hope that he’s fully fit again and back to his marauding best.

Finally at #15 a bit of a star in the Leicestershire firmament, he who will I suspect already have become “our Jaco”. No moonwalks from this guy though just great awareness, great pace and an ability to cut a superb line through the opposition defence. The only part of his repertoire we’ve yet to see is his defensive capabilities and I’ve a feeling that we’ll see something of those on Saturday.

Double joy for Saints or double trouble for Tigers then?

Well I think it important that we don’t get too carried away by the performance against Gwent who were financially and medically depleted. It was something of a concern that given so much territory and possession more points did not accrue to the home side.

I’m not being parsimonious when I say that although there were some lovely examples of interplay between the forwards and backs it was sometimes rather like they were playing “find the lady” with the ball, so fast was it being passed
hither and thither it often looked as if they didn’t know what on earth to do with the damn thing a whole passage of such play taking place without the meaningful involvement of the opposition and seeing perhaps a dozen passes propel Tigers just five or ten metres up or across field by which time they had so bamboozled themselves that they dropped the ball.

One thing can be guaranteed on Saturday and that’s that Tigers won’t get enough possession to support such wanton squandering of the ball and they will need a Plan A, a Plan B AND a Plan C., when it comes to their back play which was all a bit harum-scarum with two gift tries from the Welsh defence which were very well taken by Leon and Neil Baxter and then two tries of sheer class from Ollie Smith coming from the outside centre position. NB: To whom it may concern – Outside centre position. Not wing, outside centre.

I think the pack will win plenty of ball and may well dominate territorially in forward play the question is will the backs make good use of it?

An early Christmas present of four, or being really greedy five, away points would be very welcome and I’ve been good this year honest I have but I rather think that I’ll have to wait for the big fat man to come calling on Christmas Eve for my first present of the festive season.

Happy Christmas everybody, to you and your families from Helen and I. We wish you all a healthy, peaceful and prosperous 2004.