Harlequins
London Irish 9-14 Harlequins
By Greg P
February 16 2009
Quins picked up a deserved if unstylish win against a gutsy and tenacious London Irish side by 14 to 9 at the Madejski Stadium. Away wins at the top of the Guinness Premiership are as rare as joined up thinking from the RFU, or even quick ball from an England breakdown.
Four points against the second placed side and a game in hand at Worcester make the top of the GP a lot more attractive this morning wearing my magenta tinged glasses.
LI will argue that the loss of David Paice to a red card on 20 minutes effectively manacled them. He picked up a yellow for starting a dust up at scrum that needed resetting and then decided to let Tim Wigglesworth have a free refereeing lesson as he turned for the dug out. The ref had no hesitation in upgrading him to business class for the rest of the afternoon. Paice now has the disciplinary requirements and brain capacity that make him a shoe in for the England pack – it was just his way of getting Jonno’s attention.
In truth Irish coped very well with Paice’s loss, packing down with a centre on the flank when they needed to defensively and the remaining seven forwards put in more overtime than the guy issuing P45s at Woolworths. The real blow for Irish came when Hewatt limped off on 35 minutes. Hewatt seemed to single handedly win the GP game for Irish at the Stoop earlier this season and he again showed great distribution, deceptive pace for a tall guy and an eye for a gap that put me in mind of Will Greenwood. From then on Irish never carried quite the same attacking threat.
He left the pitch having been caught up in a defensive last ditch action. This itself followed a neat chip through from Nev which Mike Brown followed up. Brownie sacked Ojo near the LI try line – and let’s face it Brown handing out sackings is something that we all need to get used to – and Hewatt bravely got mangled in the ensuing defensive pile up.
That incident summed up the first half – lots of Quins pressure and possession – and then a failure by Quins to turn position and pressure into points. Quins had in fact kicked off and seemed to spend most of the first half in the LI half but only to work a good attacking platform and then blow it with a knock on, forward pass or just take the wrong option. Too often we seemed to go for the inside pass to Tom Williams or for JTH to give it his version of a cockney knees up through the middle. If I could read it in block Y25 then I’m sure Mike Cat could read it 10 metres away. Actually, the Irish back line are great believers in upholding tradition and I’m sure they were, like John Lewis, never knowingly 10 metres back.
Irish break outs towards the north stand were infrequent but usually instigated by great distribution from Catt and Hewatt - those guys could work for Fed Ex – and some of the long cut out passes made good use of the width of the pitch. Like most football grounds, what the Madstad pitch lacks in length it makes up in width and LI used that width better than Quins did.
As is often the case following pointless periods of possession, the side under pressure put the first points on the board. LI opened the scoring with a well struck penalty from Hewatt after Quins had not rolled away. Before that Nev had astonishingly missed with an easy shot. It was like finding out that the “water into wine” routine had produced Blue Nun rather than St Emilion such was the disbelief in the cheap seats.
The Saintly Nev soon attoned with a couple of three pointers to nudge Quins into a 6 – 3 lead, the first following a mangled scrum and the second following Paice’s upgrade. Hewatt levelled it at 6 all following a penalty to Irish from a wheeled scrum. Oddly enough Quins got virtually nothing all afternoon from turned scrums – the Irish seven were under huge pressure but were treated sympathetically by Mr W.
The first half was brightened by a couple of cracking incidents – the first was a tackle from Mike Brown on James Hudson, the LI second row, so gargantuan that I’m not sure whether JPR or Dirk Diggler would be have been prouder. Either way it was a try saver. The second incident that made me laugh was a canny little chip into the blindside by Gomarsall for his fliers to chase. It turned out that our chasers were Lambert and Robson ……… they were more Lambretta and Rickshaw.
The second half began with Tim Wigglesworth showing that he was the successful recipient of an irony by pass operation by pinging the Quins backs for encroaching off side. I’m not sure how Mr W could tell as there was a line of LI advance blockers stopping Quins backs from going anywhere. Lalanne knocked it over with a fair old lash and so at 9-6 it was and starting to get a bit frustrating for Quins.
Our collective frustration was relieved when, following a good period of pressure on the LI line we caught a line out and drove it over. The maul collectively had the nous to change the angle of attack when LI threatened to derail it so it was a cracking piece of grunt work. On the day it looked as if Botha emerged with both the ball and the congratulations but the web sites and papers are crediting Ceri “the usual suspect” Jones with the score. Nev failed to add the two points which drew an ungenerous roar from the LI crowd……hmmmm I thought that they knew better than that. At 11-9 to Quins and plenty of time on the clock it was still there for LI to win it.
Reassuringly, more Quins pressure followed – we were ambitious enough to go for attacking line outs rather than penalties – and we were also treated to a dash down the wing from ”Botha the Motor”. However, the only tangible result from all of this was that George Robson was, following a pile up, fitted with either a ski boot or was suffering the early stages of mummification. The déjà vu moment came when Tiesi, in the Irish 22, gave a pop pass to Elvis Seveali redolent of the Andy Dunn con trick pulled off against Wasps (I think) a few seasons ago.
The Quins encampment in the Irish half could not be shifted – Steffon Armitage tackled manfully but not even Catty’s distribution could break Irish out of their own 22. Some of their passing became increasingly creative (desperate more like). From continued Quins pressure we picked up a penalty – at last following a wheeled scrum. In front of the posts Nev made no mistake and suddenly Irish had to score a try to win from 14 – 9 down.
Irish gave it a fair crack in the dying minutes – in particular Ojo showed us why he is in the England frame. A penalty for not rolling away allowed Irish to kick to the corner – 3 points were no good to them as the losing BP was already in the bank – for an attacking line out. From clean ball at the line out the Irish attack burst a worryingly big hole in the cover only for JTH – with a game saving tackle to match Brownie – to do his human tank impersonation and obliterate the attack. Elvis had, temporarily, left the planet. From the ensuing break down Lalanne fumbled – a knock on and it was time for us to knock off.
Four points away from home is a cracking result against a top two side, but from a spectator’s viewpoint the game never quite caught fire. On paper the Quins backs had that Gordon Ramsay look to them – very tasty, with bags of attitude and a bit on the side (Stretts on the bench) – but the persistence of the Irish cover and our preference to kick a lot of ball never saw us cut loose. At one point it felt as if Nev had picked up a pair of Andy Goode’s boots by mistake. Tiesi seemed to want to show too much against his old employers – but he’s still a very exciting runner. Stretts came on with about 15 minutes to go but I’m not sure that we put the ball in his hands once. Ugo was solid but Ojo showed a bit more in the excitement stakes. JTH – faced with some seriously chunky oppo – played a very ballsy game. Gomm by his own standards was more Lambrusco than Krug.
The forwards as ever worked very hard – anything less against Irish is a suicide note – and deserve most of the of credit. We made more of a mess of the LI line out than we could have hoped. As it was LI took off Gary Johnson to accommodate the replacement hooker and having one less target helped us. In the scrum and in the loose we more than matched some very committed work from the Irish.
Clake Dermody – the LI prop – was made man of the match, presumably for being the only LI front rower who put in a full 80 minutes at the office. I thought any one of Steffon Armitage, Mike Brown, JTH or Gary Botha could as easily have picked it up.
I did not get to the post match press conference but, from the papers, inevitably Toby Booth is majoring on the loss of Paice – frankly it was self inflicted and Booth’s comments about the ref are up there with the ”dog ate my homework”. Deano’s understated comments reflect a quiet satisfaction on what was a good result and a job well done.
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Let's just think about beating Gloucester and really opening up those top four slots.
Tahnks
Happiness is a state of mind - and it's easy to get a passport (or at least a temporary visa)
Was amused that somewhere in the marketing blurb it says
"LONDON IRISH
Let us entertain you ..."
or not as the case may be.
It beats me why Strettle didn't see more of the ball when he was on. Tom Williams seemed to be able to get plenty of it when he was playing...
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to bleat about it all over the internet"
Well remembered - wrong player and wrong oppo! There's a job for me on the Sun yet. At least LI can chalk off that particular moral outrage from the debit column in the great conspiracy ledger!
