London Welsh
London Welsh v Bedford Preview
By Mark W-J
February 3 2011
The format of the Championship season, with seemingly random outbreaks of British & Irish Cup, has its critics, but it does at least give London Welsh a quick opportunity to avenge our defeat at Bedford just three weeks ago. The Blues are seven points ahead of us in the table, and an away win on Saturday would end any lingering hopes of Welsh claiming the second seeding in the upcoming play-offs.
Our 44-14 mauling at Goldington Road in the cup last month was our heaviest defeat since Leeds won 38-0 at ODP in October 2008, and the first time that we’d conceded over 40 points since Moseley’s 40-10 victory twelve months previously. It wasn’t, however, our biggest defeat to the Blues: they won a friendly on New Year’s Eve, 1994 by 51-5 – although in mitigation, we were in Five South at the time, while they were two levels above us in Courage Three – while in April 2007 they brought down the curtain on our 50th season at ODP with a thumping 47-10 win. Conversely, last season brought our two biggest wins in ‘competitive’ fixtures; 28-17 in the league and 26-13 in the cup.
Saturday’s game is the fourth and final in a testing series of fixtures for the Blues. The turn of the year was marked by back-to-back defeats at the hands of the Pirates and Worcester, but after the two week break for the cup they returned to winning ways last Saturday with a bonus-point win over Nottingham. The Green & Whites had strung together a run of six consecutive wins, collecting five try bonuses in the process, to move into fifth place in the table, and after 10 minutes they’d pulled out a 19-0 lead over their hosts. But the Blues fought back with 47 unanswered points, full-back Ed Thrower contributing 27 of them, including two of his side’s six tries. Thrower had a brief stint at Welsh after leaving Wasps, making a single appearance in a 13-6 home defeat to Moseley in December 2006. He’s in his first season with the Blues following spells with Saracens and Parma, and is now their leading try-scorer with eight; he’s also second in the points scoring charts behind the ever-reliable Australian Canadian, James Pritchard.
After Saturday, Bedford finish this stage of the season with a visit from the rock-bottom Bees and a trip to Plymouth on the final weekend, whereas Welsh travel to Worcester next Saturday before hosting Nottingham in two weeks’ time. Glenn Delaney’s side are now only eight points behind us and have a game in hand – scheduled for next Wednesday at home to Doncaster. They also have to play Worcester (h) and Pirates (a) but given our current poor run of form it’s quite conceivable that we could come to the final round of fixtures still unsure of our place in the top four. While the results at Rotherham and Bristol are not the first back-to-back defeats we’ve suffered this season – we lost to Bedford and Worcester, coincidentally our next two opponents, in the autumn – we haven’t lost three games in a row since November/ December 2008, when Danny Wilson’s first four games in charge brought defeats to Nottingham, Coventry, Pirates and Doncaster.
Bedford’s comeback against Nottingham last week contrasts sharply with Welsh’s recent habit of going off the boil in the second half of our league matches, a shortcoming identified by many supporters as being an underlying problem in our recent loss of form. Indeed, in the course of our recent defeats to Rotherham and Bedford we haven’t scored a single point in the second period of either game. We haven’t yet thrown away a half-time lead in any of our seven league defeats, although at both Bedford and Rotherham we were level at the interval, but six times in our last 13 matches we have ‘lost’ the second 40, compared to just once in the opening six rounds. We’re now only the fifth-highest try scorers in the division, although with only 25 tries – and not a single try bonus – conceded, we still have the meanest defence in the league. This is offset, however, by having conceded more points from penalties (162) than any other club, suggesting that our solid defence possible oversteps the bounds of legality at times.
This weekend looks like it could test the nerves of London Welshmen. Friday night’s game is arguably too tight to call, and Saturday’s fixture, while pitting two of the Championship’s top sides against one another, is one which traditionally worries the home fans. Our record against Bedford is poor, and the recent form of the two sides suggests that we will do well to stay in touch with the pack tucked-in behind Worcester. Bedford’s recovery from their recent setbacks has put them in the box seat for the elusive second seeding, and puts the pressure on Welsh to react in a similar fashion to our own disappointments of the last few weeks. And just as the national team are hoping that an opening victory over the old enemy will be the springboard to Grand Slam glory, as it was in 2005 and 2008, so an air of Welsh optimism over ODP on Saturday may be just the fillip the team needs.
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Stumbleupon03/02/2011 09:17
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I'm not discounting two home wins though as both games have the potential to be extremely close results. Can you fix a result with a sonic screwdriver?
![[:wor kid:]](/phorum-5.1.15/mods/smileys/images/13.gif "[:wor kid:]")
London Welsh team:
15: Errie Claassens
14: Paul Sampson
13: Hudson Tonga'uiha
12: Paul Mackey
11: Josh Drauninu
10: Gordon Ross (C)
9: Nick Runciman
1: Shawn Pittman
2: Saul Nelson
3: Lorne Ward
4: Dan Williams
5: Matt Corker
6: Epi Taione
7: Michael Hills
8: Lee Beach
Replacements:
16: Dan George
17: Anthony Kent
18: Gary Johnson
19: Jonathan Mills
20: Ben Stevenson
21: James Lewis
22: Waisea Luveniyali
15. Edd Thrower
14. Handre Schmidt
13. Brendan Burke
12. Ian Vass
11. Ollie Dodge
10. Myles Dorrian
9. Will Chudley
1. Dan Seal
2. Dan Richmond (c)
3. Phil Boulton
4. Mike Howard
5. Paul Tupai
6. Alex Rae
7. Sacha Harding
8. Chris Goodman
Replacements: 16. Joe Clark, 17. Sam Walsh, 18. Gregor Gillanders, 19. Ben Lewitt, 20. Nick Walshe, 21. Jake Sharp, 22. James Pritchard.
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