By Bob Fossil
April 6 2007

Saints sit bottom of the GP and matches are running out. They travel to Newcastle on Sunday in a bid to bring home a precious away win. Can they pull it off?

 

Budgies vs. Saints, is this the end?

“This is the end
Beautiful friend
this is the end
my only friend, the end

of our elaborate plans, the end of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again”
Jim Morrison

NEWCASTLE FALCONS vs NORTHAMPTON SAINTS

SUNDAY, 8th APRIL 2007

MATCH PREVIEW

As we try to calm down, come back down to earth, return home from wonderful weekends in the heart of the Basque country, or just come to terms with the weekends enthralling and exhilarating performance from the green black and gold attack, someone needs to offer a moment of clarity.

Sadly that someone has to be me.

Despite the welcome respite of the European cup and the upset to end them all the Saints will not find themselves in need of reminding that this weekend they will be standing on top of a perch with the possibility of being thrown deep into the grit at the bottom of the bird cage.

Oh yeah? The premiership! You remember that don't you? Bill Shankly once said, "Cups are great, great for the club, great for the city, but this, (touches 1st Division championship trophy), this is our bread and butter."

No, I'm sorry but its time to face facts. Lose this weekend and all of the previous weekends brilliant, brave, honest, for once this season we were honest, hard work and dedication mean absolutely Jack.
The one thing that has been consistent this season is simply that we have been inconsistent. We saw the Saints give us all a lovely early Christmas present previously in the brave win against Wasps at home, only for us to receive a proper seeing to from Sarries at Baghdad Rd. We beat the Tigs and
then failed to show up against Glaws. We have consistently looked like winning, only to fall apart in the final throws of games.

Of all the things I saw this weekend, the one which probably stood out to most people is the return of the "Think Agen" spirit, which has been patronized by the regulars of COYSDC. But whilst these "Agen" moments are fantastic when they occur, they are still few and far between.

The question I find myself asking now is can we bind the "Agen spirit" for a month and get ourselves out of trouble?

Well I have my doubts, that has more to do with the amount of mental and physical energy it will have taken our brave boys to overcome the mountainous odds of all those beers and chips they consumed on Sunday evening.

But the fact of the matter is simply this, there comes a time when every man (or woman) must stand and fight. Sunday was a terrific example of this, we saw young men like Digger, a saint through and through, fight hammer and tong to claw his hometown side into the semi finals. We also have players who were brought in exactly for these kinds of occasions, the big stage. If they aren’t going to show up for these big games when are they?

The thing is that this weekend is thoroughly doable.

The Falcons, having had their wings well and truly clipped by what can only politely be described as a homer on Friday evening, are in trouble too, if only mathematically. But if we can go up to Kingston Park and actually, y’know, win. A 2 horse race well and truly becomes a 3 horse one.

Falcons played Toby Flood on the wing this past weekend; unfortunately he was duly injured near the end of the match. Flood has been seen as “the next big thing” by many in the press and is most certainly the latest love child of the lardy one and his Churchillian dog.

The weekend’s game did tickle me, on Saturday night I attempted for the first time in six months to actually listen to Barnes commentate. He was working alongside Mark Robson, who now mainly commentates for Setanta Sports, but is infinitely better than the snooty Miles fella who has great trouble controlling the pitch of his voice.

For my dear pals who were quaffing the rouge in the land of beer and chips (or those who have not succumbed to kneel at the feet of Murdoch) I will elaborate. Barnes was at his best, handing out pithy comments like a waiter dishing out a plate of imperial mints after a spectacular vindaloo.

But after Brando, sorry Barnesy, had described a try by James Haskell as “a delightful and brilliant piece of play” rather than simply pointing out that one of the Leinster props had missed a tackle I decided that I had had enough and actually quite fancied the Doctors new assistant, who is a
smoking hot fox, and flicked over.

Now, the reasons for my bi-annual attempt to put up with the benign one are many, but the primary one being that the batteries on my Ipod had flickered and died as I returned home an hour earlier after walking my beloved Jack Russell, Sam.

Secondly that the week before whilst queuing to collect tickets for the Bristol vs. Saints match at the Memorial ground, Mr. Barnes had waddled by both Simbles [Bob’s brother – Ed.] and I.

And Simbles became a man possessed! You see Simbles, Simbles is, how do I put this politely? Well, not only is Simbles as thick as piggy poo that has been sat in the sun, but, like all members of the Richmond family, is as mad as a bottle of chips. He was hung over, agitated, and the vision of the lardy boy tipped him over the edge.

Whilst most people can see lardy for the wannabe pantomime star that he is, sadly Simbles is not one of these. So whilst I will watch live rugby on sky with some soothing light Latin jazz softly tickling my earlobes, Simbles will grit his teeth and bear the undeniable horror that is the barrel going
on and on about how “ooh, feeding in the scrums” or “ooh, what an offload from *insert name of lardy lovechild here*” or him and the dog twittering on about the most pedestrian of skills from PROFESSIONAL RUGBY PLAYERS.

Yeah so Simbles is not fond of the benign barrel. One of Simbles dreams is to replace the smarmy Simon Lazemby on the Rugby Club so that he can simply turn to the Lardmeister and say, “You’re talking buzzcocks lardy!” As I said, he’s not fond.

As we waited in line for our tickets I noted Stuart over my shoulder. Without thinking I quipped to Simon, “Your best pal is over there bruv,” before my eyes I saw cold sweat came trickling off Simbles, his nipples were suddenly erect (or that could be the cold), and he saw an opportunity to confront the insufferable pest.

Thankfully, I was able to calm him down before Simbles was given the chance to chase him through the ground and “open up a can of whoop-ass on that motherlickin son of a nutcracker” (or words to that affect).

You see Simon has form when it comes to confronting minor celebs. And when I say minor celebs, I mean short people who are on telly and are annoying. Also on Simbles list of “people I would like to beat to death with their own shoes” is a welsh gent called Pennie from the proto-anarcho rockers, The Automatic.

Now this little man is truly a little man. On a par with Prince or Don Estelle or Tom Cruise, he is small. How small? Small enough to make everyone’s favorite Saints supporting pixie Miss Louisa “room for a
littl’un?” Loveluck look like Damo Browne by comparison. That in itself seemed more than enough reason for Simbles to feel the desire to accost him outside a Lemonheads gig before Christmas.

Once more dear reader your brave author had to step in to stop Simbles from pulling off one of Mr. Pennies rather ghastly brown winkle pickers and proceeding to batter his name in bruises and contusions onto the pasty white skin of the parasitic shouty keyboard player (and I use the term Keyboard player loosely, Did you ever see the episode of Friends where Ross, or the gay one as he has always been known in our family, played his keyboard in Central Perk? Well Mr. Pennie’s keyboard skills are one evolutionary step below those of Ross from Friends).

Bit of background there, but I digress, I had decided to listen to Mr. Barnes in the oft chance that he might mention being in fear for his life from a kamikaze Saints supporter with spectacular hair and that smells like a Chinese brothel. Well, you never know; keep an eye out at the Ricoh Stadium Lardy boy, Simbles is after you. He’s got your scent and he reckons it comes in a little white bottle and has a little ship on it.

Is he close? Hmmm…

But whilst watching Sky’s coverage of rugby often shows camera work of the highest quality and the depth of their coverage certainly puts the beeb to shame its their complete unswerving desire to never ever ever go off script that tickles me the most.

With about 30 minutes to go you could begin to see that it was going to be Saints' day, frequent opportunities to kick at goal were spurned by Biarritz, as were opportunities to award a multitude of justifiable yellow cards as the brave Saintsmen made hit after hit and decide to hang around at the
bottom of the rucks time and again. But no, Biarritz were tripe and we were lucky was the line they used and so steadfastly stuck too. Well, you show me a European Championship winning team and I will show you where they got lucky!

Ok, well, look, that’s that covered, to business!!

Falcons, an English team, most English team in the history of all things English. So English are they that the queen even made the falcon the national bird of England. Geordie is now officially our native tongue. They count Maggie Thatcher, Rowan Atkinson, David Hockney, Sir Richard Branson and the only English pope, Adrian the fourth as former players. Even Matt Burke is officially an Englishman. Rob Andrew, high profile media whore/multi talented conjurer that he is would have most of the public at large believe that he left Newcastle in a better state than he found it.

Err; was that with a team full of young English kids who aren’t quite ready yet?

Riiight…

As predicted by yours truly as early as July of last year, Falcons went out and brought in some highered guns from down south as soon as possible. So much for the early season claims, started in the end of season dead rubber, that English is the way forward.

I wait with baited breath Mr. Andrews take on the Euro Cup Fiasco. I’m sure he will eventually blame Serge Blanco for destroying the professional game, but I’m still a tad concerned that he’s nowhere to be seen at the moment because it doesn’t affect the national side. Mind you, it never does until they need excuses.

So keep an eye out for this one over the course of the next 18 months,

“Well the players are not playing in the European cup anymore and the intensity of the rugby they are playing simply isn’t up to it. They can’t adapt to the intensity of the international game.” (Or words to this affect)

Sound bite excuses, the next evolutionary step in the war on good rugby. Andrew is a master, no wonder he got the job.

Whilst Saints often receive a great deal of jibes from other supporters at other clubs, as well as the press (the daily hates Peter Jackson seems to do all in his power to upset Kiwis at every opportunity) about our large contingent of Johnny foreigners that wear green black and gold. What aggravates me is that Redsaint’s pals in the themes-valley are just as guilty as us when it comes to employing folks from out of town, yet they don’t get anything like the amount of grief we do.

With rumours of extensions to the salary cap next year and cover for the world cup in desperately needed throughout the premiership, the mangy league and the top 14 in France its more important now, more than ever that you get value for money. It’s always going to be easier to head down south and pick up a player than wait two years for the prospect from the academy. Mind you, don’t expect squads to get bigger, the clubs will just end up playing the players more

The Falcons have been caught out this time but they have shown that they have the ability to learn from their mistakes, an ability to would do well to learn ourselves.

Yeah, for ever Marius Hurter and Matt Burke there’s a Loki Crichton, who I’m sure is a fine professional, but that missing a pen from in front of the sticks? Somebody somewhere has plenty of wonga on Saints to go down methinks.

Just kidding just kidding!

Anyway the Falcons have named this here team here...

15 Matthew Burke
14 Tom May
13 Mathew Tait
12 Jamie Noon
11 Toby Flood
10 Jonny Wilkinson
9 Lee Dickson

1 Joe McDonnell
2 Matt Thompson
3 Micky Ward
4 Mark Sorenson
5 Andy Perry
6 Geoff Parling
7 Ben Woods
8 Brent Wilson

Replacements: Jon Golding, Andy Long, Andy Buist, Phil Dowson, John Rudd, James Grindal, Loki Crichton

Have to say I’m quite pleased to see Mr. Crichton on the bench. Mind you he’s probably 4th choice kicker in that starting 22.

The Saints have taken recently to announcing the team at the last minute. So, with that in mind, it guessing game time.

15 Bruce
14 Digger
13 Shay/Los
12 Kyddo
11 Monty
10 Los/ Smyler
9 Sharky

1 Wee Tam
2 Dylan
3 Brooksy
4 Big Dav
5 Shorty
6 Toops
7 Bluey
8 Labs

Replacements: 16 Mattie Cortsese, 17 Tiny, 18 Lordy, 19 DB2, 20 Foxy, 21 Johnny Howard, 22 Smyler / Mattie Bourret

So there we have it, one team laced with talent and potential, the other laced potential and talent. This is the first in a month of cup finals, not something that we are especially good at, but here is hoping that will be coming to a close this weekend.

As good ol’ Jim would say,

“The time to hesitate is through”

Saints to sneak it by a point, thanks to Loki Crichton missing a pen.

 

Newcastle Falcons:

15.Matt Burke (captain), 14.Tom May, 13.Mathew Tait, 12.Jamie Noon, 11.Toby Flood, 10.Jonny Wilkinson, 9. Lee Dickson; 1. Joe McDonnell, 2. Matt Thompson, 3. Micky Ward, 4. Mark Sorenson, 5. Andy Perry, 6. Geoff Parling, 7. Ben Woods, 8. Brent Wilson

Replacements: Jon Golding, Andy Long, Andy Buist, Phil Dowson, John Rudd, James Grindal, Loki Crichton

Northampton Saints:

15. Paul Diggin, 14. Sean Lamont, 13. Bruce Reihana (capt.), 12. Robbie Kydd, 11. Ben Cohen, 10. Carlos Spencer, 9. Mark Robinson; 1. Tom Smith, 2. Dylan Hartley, 3. Chris Budgen, 4. David Gerard, 5.Christian Short, 6. Paul Tupai, 7. Darren Fox, 8. Christian Labit

Replacements: Matias Cortese, John Brooks, Damien Browne, Mark Hopley, Johnny Howard, Stephen Myler, Vaughan Going

Referee: Mr Chris White