By Mark W-J
December 31 2010

London Welsh go into 2011 sitting in fourth place in the Championship table, sixteen points and one place ahead of our hosts on Sunday afternoon, Doncaster, and just one adrift of the Cornish Pirates in third.  Only the top four clubs can claim to have won more games than they’ve lost so far, with most teams having played at least fifteen of the 22 fixtures in stage one of this convoluted season. 

Doncaster played only one fixture in the whole of December, a 37-16 home defeat to Worcester ten days before Christmas.  Since winning 33-29 at Old Deer Park on the first weekend of November the Warriors have collected a full 25 points from five games, and consequently lead second-placed Bedford by seven points, each club having played 16 games.  Despite Pirates and Welsh having a game in hand the Cornishmen trail the Blues by ten points, meaning we’re 18 points adrift of top spot.  Apparently the slight drop-off in the quality of the performances is part of the ‘bigger picture’ as Phil Greening and Mike Friday prepare the squad for a full-on assault on the play-offs, but players and supporters alike seem to be suffering from the jitters over the cold winter months.

A trip to Doncaster is not the most welcoming of fixtures as we try to reassert our position as genuine promotion contenders.  Indeed, when the squad was taking shape over the summer months the reaction of most supporters to the assembly of South Seas Islanders and sevens specialists was: ‘great on the firm pitches – but what about in mid-winter at Rotherham or Doncaster?’  The Knights won at ODP last season, and back in October they recovered from a 29-3 half-time deficit to claim a losing bonus point in a 29-24 defeat – and they came so very close to stealing all five points.  We collected the full ten points in our two meetings in the play-offs last season, but Donny seemed to suffer from a collective hangover after a punishing schedule throughout February saw them sneak into the top eight. This season, however, Lynn Howells’ side have made a strong case for being ‘the best of the rest’ as a run of four bonus point wins from five games in October and early November saw them overhaul Nottingham in fifth place.

The Knights are playing a more expansive game this season, with the vast majority of their tries being scored by the outside backs.  Some have suggested that this new approach is related to the pre-season announcement that Howells will be stepping down in the summer, and that the coach’s more relaxed outlook is being replicated by his charges.  Another view expressed on Rolling Maul is that the loss of centre Hudson Tonga’uiha to London Welsh has seen the ball being passed further along the backline, although the scoring record of our own wingers this season indicates that that may be a rather biased view of a former player.  Hudson has recently been joined at Welsh by another ex-Knight, Jamie Lennard, who topped the points-scoring charts in the old National One in 2008-09 with 298 points from a 30-game season and has been loaned to us by his new employers, London Irish.  The Yorkshiremen have been advertising in the press for a new DoR for next season, but Howells has recently expressed a wish for his assistant, Brett Davey, to be promoted as his replacement, thereby continuing the recent tradition of coaches with Welsh links: prior to Howells’ arrival the position had been held by Clive Griffiths, Kingsley Jones and former Cardiff and Springboks centre Pieter Muller.

As we move into a new decade this weekend, it’s strange to look back at the state of National One ten years ago, the first season of the Adrian Davies era, and see how much – or how little – has changed.  On 1^st January 2001 the league leaders were Worcester, who had beaten us both home and away, including a 51-3 demolition at Sixways.  The eventual champions, Leeds, were six points behind the leaders, albeit with a game in hand, with Bedford a further 14 points back in third.  Welsh were fifth, four points adrift of the Blues and level with Birmingham Solihull, while Exeter were in the relegation places – 13^th of fourteen clubs, with just three wins from ten games.  Come the end of the season, however, the Chiefs had risen to third place with eleven wins from their remaining sixteen games, while the Blues only escaped a second consecutive relegation by a single point.

Meanwhile, the division’s top try scorer was Matt Vines, with ten from twelve appearances – he went on to equal the post-war club record of 25 tries in a season (17 in the league, four in the cup and four in friendlies).  Doncaster, on the other hand, were two rungs below us on the league ladder, playing in National Three North – although they had started out thirteen years previously at level 10 in Yorkshire Two – and still five years away from National One.  Only Welsh and Bedford have remained in National One/ The Championship for the whole decade: it’s been widely reported that our ambition is to put an end to that stay at the end of this season, so we’ll have to hope that the New Year brings a new drive and focus to performances on the field.