By PerryGo
September 23 2002

With the full time whistle just minutes away, Quins’ supporters were desperate to secure a bonus point – urging the team to one final, heroic effort.  Come on, you Quins!  Don’t give up!

But wait…!  What’s that?  A bonus point for four tries?  Surely you mean a point for losing by 7 points or less?  But no, the winds of change are blowing a gale at the Stoop...

 “Simply Magnificent”

 Having thrown in a quote from the Telegraph’s Paul Ackford last week, let’s continue the theme this week with one from the Telegraph’s Rupert Bates: “Simply magnificent” he wrote (referring to Quins.  Yes, that’s right, our Quins…)

 Those of us who heard what the players had to say midweek had no doubt whatsoever that this week’s performance would not lack for effort and what we saw was a wonderful, committed team performance.  The bonus point would have been nice (memo to David Slemen: ‘you don’t get a bonus point for two drop-goals, but you do for one more try’) and yet I challenge any supporter to say they wouldn’t have settled for 29-19 at 3.00 pm Saturday afternoon.  Not quite as acceptable as 29-16, but there you go…

 London Irish (since we won, we won’t make any ‘they-were-funny-last-year’ remarks about ‘Thames Valley’ or ‘Springboks’) were probably the perfect team to play at this point in our season.  Just the sort of opposition against which we might be expected to perform and try to rebuild some fragile confidence.  Shorn of several key, first choice players, one kind of felt the Irish might struggle and so it proved.  

 Quins must have been visibly lifted to think that Sheasby was not fit – surely just the kind of guy who would raise his game at the Stoop – and to see that, perhaps surprisingly, Strudwick (a lock) was playing number eight in his place.  With Bishop away on international duty in Siberia, the influential Venter still injured and Sackey missing from the wing, Irish were there for the taking.  Somehow, it felt like it was going to be our day. 

 Now, don’t get me wrong, they could still field the likes of Horak at full back, Danaher and Dawson in the back row and Rossouw on the other wing.  Not to mention the little guy who did all the damage with the boot at the Stoop in last year’s Cup match, one Barry Everitt.  

 Take nothing away from Harlequins, they still had to raise their game and hold it together for a whole 80 minutes (and a bit) - for the first time this season - and with many observers doubting it would happen. 

 Put that in your claret, Stuart Barnes!  Feed that to your ferrets, Dewi Morris.  Ha!

 Dippy and Ace

 Apart from a few scrums that creaked a bit – still needs some work there, chaps – the forwards were incredible.  Fuga had a good comeback game, as did Codling who seems to get better and better, not just in the lineout (where he’s supreme) but also around the park. But this week’s special praise is reserved for Dippy and Ace in the back row.  When they look at the stats, I am sure big Tony will have a broad smile on his face.  Excellent performance, even if it was not quite as visible as that of Tiatia.  Diprose compensates for a lack of pace with some first rate positioning and his ability to turn over the player and/or the ball in the tackle is so impressive.  He’s no slouch at the tail of the lineout either.

 Early in the match, I was a bit concerned that (once again) I was going to be writing critically about Ace’s Samoanesque affection for the (usually illegal) ‘big hit’, aimed at landing his opponent into the South Stand - particularly after Ace ‘hit’ clean air instead of his target on two consecutive occasions (“Oops, missed..) and then shoulder-charged an opponent right in front of the referee to give away a kickable penalty.  Thankfully, it wasn’t a yellow card – referees seem to like penalizing that sort of thing in that sort of way.  But, credit where it’s due, the Samoan smartened up his act thereafter and had an excellent match.    

 One thing I’d like to be reviewing on the video this week would be Pat Sanderson’s contribution.  Now, anonymity in a match is not always a sign of anything negative – many number sixes, the classic example perhaps being the wonderful Richard Hill, do the important, yet unseen, stuff so well without attracting much attention from the public at large.  But Sanderson is a number seven.  And, to me, he’s been a bit anonymous in most of the games to date.  I’m not criticizing, just wondering.  Having said that, take a look at some statistics later in the article… 

I’m sure everyone felt gutted for Will Greenwood, and our deepest sympathies go out to him and Caroline for their tragic loss, but what a superb stand-in performance it was by Nick Greenstock.  No doubt for him the highlight was his 80 metre run for a try from his well-judged interception of Everitt’s chip.  Thankfully, Pieter Rossouw, who was catching him up fast, tripped over his own feet (it must have been his feet he tripped over, mustn’t it..?), thus leaving the fast-slowing Nick the necessary 22 seconds to cover the last 50 metres unmolested.  This at least gave Rossouw his first opportunity for a show of petulance –of which we were to enjoy more later.  ‘More later?’…now where have I heard that before?

 Bonus Point Time?

 Going into the last ten minutes, an alarm must have sounded in the dug-out.  ‘Wake-up time’ had arrived, or more accurately: ‘don’t go to sleep time’. 

 The fear of conceding a breakaway try and then a penalty to tie the game 29-all must have been in the back of Slemen’s mind in trying to secure a 13 point margin with that late drop-goal attempt, rather than spray a pass out to the overlap waiting on either side of him and risk an interception.  Especially since it nearly did happen, in a very similar position, albeit called back by the referee for an Irish offside (whilst half the crowd was still cheering Bemand’s stellar chase back to intercept).

I thought Quins never really let Irish get into the game all afternoon, actually, even though the visitors had a mini-renaissance mid-second half that was a bit worrying at the time.  Despite the territorial advantage of some long touch finders from Everitt, and the impressive Horak’s counterattacks, Quins’ defence was very solid.    Nathan Williams lay to rest the ghost of last week – he’s learned the long spiral to touch and the traditional up-and-under (permanently ditching his trademark ‘down-and-under’, maybe?) all in seven days – and had a good game.  My heart missed a beat when in the first half he scooped up the loose ball in his own 22 rather than dropping on it, but, fair game, it worked well enough. 

 The overall error rate seems to have dropped back into ‘normal’ territory (normal for a good side that is) and for once we seemed to have a little more of the luck and the referee’s decisions.  And how nice it must have been for the players to not be chasing the game this time.

 Although the Harlequin players were probably feeling a tad anxious towards the end of the match, I was not so worried.  Irish never officially gave up the match as lost, but bringing on Mark Mapletoft – something I’d been hoping for all afternoon – must surely be the substitution-equivalent of throwing in the towel, if not the whole laundry basket. Especially to replace the dangerous-looking Michael Horak.  Maybe Horak was injured.  Maybe they’d run out of alternatives on the bench.  There must be a rational explanation…

 ‘Lies’, ‘Damn Lies’ and ‘Statistics’

 Snug in the comfy, cosy environment of the Deb’s Bar before the match, I was reading through the programme.  There was no rugby to watch on the NEC-equipped big screen, because the NEC projection TV equipment still wasn’t working.   Betcha life by the next home match someone slaps a Sanyo sticker on it.  Or fixes it.  My money’s on the Sanyo sticker.

 Anyway, reading between the adverts, my eye fell upon the Orange Opta stats.  What are they, I hear you ask?  Good question.  Orange is a phone company (pity they don’t make projection TV equipment) and Opta is something else.  I’ve no idea what. 

 The stats are player performance figures, which are now becoming quite interesting and more representative, as they embrace the aggregate position after 2 matches.  Or 3 matches.  Some of the stats look like they’re after 2 and some after 3.  But it doesn’t say.   

We all know what they say about there being ‘Lies’, ‘Damn Lies’ and ‘Statistics’, but here goes.  Remember, I didn’t make them up… If you’ve still got the prog, they’re on pages 36 and 53.  If you haven’t, here are some snippets.

•  Top Tackles:                           Pat Sanderson (23)

• Top Metres:                             Nathan Williams (112)

• Top Defenders Beaten:           Pat Sanderson (4)

• Top Ball Carries:                     Will Greenwood/Williams (16 each)

• Top Lineout Wins:                  Alex Codling (10)

 They also list what they call ‘Orange Opta Facts’ (which are presented as kind of selected observations) amongst them being:

•  ‘NEC Harlequins have missed the most tackles in the Premiership (53)’

•  ‘Paul Burke has missed the most tackles so far this season (9)’

 Ouch!  And to think they’re printing this stuff in our programme!  Make the most of it, folks, because it probably won’t be there next time! 

 Mike, it doesn’t look like they’ve studied the videos – send ‘em an e-mail about it.

 Just to rub salt in the wounds, page 53 listed the top 9 individual try scorers so far this season (no Harlequin made the list) and the top points scorers (Burkey made 10^th spot – out of 10).

Maybe that doesn’t tell us too much yet, but unless the programme experiences censorship of former-messageboard proportions, it might be quite interesting to follow it as the stats build up down the line.  More later…