By Mark W-J
August 18 2011

London Welsh conclude their preparations for the 2011-12 campaign with a visit to Gloucester on Saturday - our first trip to Kingsholm in 29 years.  The match brings together two of the losing semi-finalists from last season’s Premiership and Championship play-offs, but while Welsh have already had a run-out against London Irish last weekend, this is the Cherry & Whites’ first pre-season outing.

Gloucester RFC was formed in 1873, playing on the Spa ground for eighteen years before moving to Kingsholm in 1891.  The reason for the relocation was that the Spa was shared with a cricket club, and during the winter months the rugby club had used salt to remove frost from the playing surface, with the longer-term effect of killing not only the grass on the wicket but also the relationship between the two clubs.  Back then the club wore a navy kit, but according to legend had to borrow a set of red and white hooped jerseys from Painswick RFC after travelling to an away fixture with an incomplete set of shirts.  Having adopted these new colours as their own, the media first started to describe the club as the ‘Red & Whites’ in the 1950s, with the description being amended to the now familiar ‘Cherry & Whites’ during the 1960s.

Our first visit was on Good Friday, 28^th March, 1902, Gloucester coming from behind to win 14-3, and three years later, on 7^th January 1905, we hosted ‘Glos’ for the first time, at Queens’ Club.  Their next visit, ten months later, was our very first fixture at our new quarters, the Essex County Ground in Leyton - our 12^th ‘home’ in our 20 year existence - which drew a crowd of just over 2,000.  Kingsholm became a regular stop on our Easter tour, until in 1952, fifty years after that first visit, the fixture was dropped by the Welsh in order to accommodate a stop-off at Aberavon on Easter Saturday.

In fact, meetings became so rare that we have only entertained Gloucestertwice at Old Deer Park since we set-up home here 54 seasons ago - and both of those have been cup ties.  The first was in the quarter-finals of the inaugural season of knockout rugby, 1971-72, when, having won away at local rivals Bathand Bristol, the Cherry & Whites faced a Welsh side containing eleven full internationals, although missing JPR through injury.  Almost 7,500 crammed in to the ground to witness the visitors take the spoils, 9-4, in a masterclass of 10-man rugby, before winning away from home - for the fourth consecutive round - at Coventry in the semi-final.  The final against Moseley at Twickenham is remembered as an afternoon in which sporadic outbreaks of rugby interrupted the violence on the pitch, with Moseley & England lock Nigel Horton being sent-off in his team’s 17-6 defeat.  Their second visit was a fourth round tie on 3^rd January 1998, in what was now called the Tetley Bitter Cup.  This was the year we won promotion from Jewson National One (level three in the pyramid) under the leadership of Clive Griffiths and Rowland Phillips, and the winds roared, the heavens opened, and a rainbow shone over the pagoda as Matt Vines crossed twice in the opening quarter to open up a 12-5 lead.  By half-time our more illustrious visitors had hit back to lead 17-15, and although we kept in touch for the third quarter, coach Richard Hill summoned his first-choice half-backs, Scott Benton and Mark Mapletoft from the bench with the score at 18-22 and only 13 minutes remaining.  The final score of 18-34 didn’t do the Welsh justice - and nobody remembers that a 19 year-old winger, playing in place of Philippe Saint-Andre, also bagged a brace that afternoon.  His name?  Rob Jewell, later of this parish.

Our last visit to Kingsholm also came in the cup, a third round tie on 22^nd January 1983.  On that occasion we emerged victorious, with Bob Ackerman, Clive Rees and scrum-half Ian George all excelling in a 14-3 win.  That eleven point margin represents our biggest win over the Cherry & Whites in nearly 110 years, whereas our biggest defeat in the series - 40-8 on Easter Monday 1925 - was the first time we had conceded 40 points to English opposition.  In mitigation, that was the fourth of five matches in six days for most of the squad, eleven London Welshmen having represented Captain Crawshay’s XV against a representative Welsh XV on Maundy Thursday before tour matches at Abertillery (Good Friday) and Cross Keys (Saturday), finishing at Bristol on the Tuesday.  For the record, Crawshay’s beat the Welsh XV 16-8, and the other three games on the Easter tour were also won.

Despite the lack of fixtures between the clubs, many players have graced the hallowed turf of both Kingsholm and Old Deer Park in recent seasons.  This summer has seen scrum-half Nick Runciman return to Gloucester after 65 appearances in three years at the Welsh, following in the footsteps of former teammate Paul Doran Jones, who has quit Kingsholm for Northampton this summer, two years after leaving ODP.  And apart from the aforementioned Rob Jewell, who made 30 appearances (18 starts) in two seasons with London Welsh, our former coach, Phil Greening, made eleven appearances (eight starts) for his hometown club before moving on to Sale and Wasps.  Runciman is the latest in a long line of Championship (and formerly National One) players to have been given a shot at the big time by Gloucester, with Bryan Redpath following the example set by his predecessor, Dean Ryan.  Akapusi Qera (Bees), Will James (Plymouth), and Tims Taylor & Molenaar (both Nottingham) - as well as PDJ - have all taken the opportunity which has been presented to them at Kingsholm, whereas many players who have stepped-up to other Premiership clubs in recent seasons have, for whatever reason, found themselves loaned back to Championship.  Such astute recruitment, coupled with the very successful academy system alongside a nucleus of established Premiership and international stars, means the ‘Shed-heads’ have every reason to believe that last year’s LV=Cup success will be the start of a new era rather than another false dawn.