By Saint Tim
April 23 2011

Well the start of the week from hell for Saints, with three away matches in 8 days.  First up was the Falcons and that is never an easy place to go and win, then given that Newcastle Falcons are fighting for their life makes it doubly difficult.  This was the first time we would come up against ex Saint Euan Murray so it was interesting to see how the scrum went.  Jim selected pretty much the Cup Final team only 5 days after the intense encounter that was the Heineken Cup quarter final and the big question was would they be too jaded from that game?

Who was your MoTM as Saints won away at Falcons?

I must admit I missed the beginning of the game due to family duties and it was almost the end of the first half with Saints leading by one point after a Foden converted try against two Jimmy Gopperth penalties.  In fact I arrived just in time to see Myler score a penalty to take Saints into the half with a four point lead.  As expected this was not a walk over and I was sure it was going to be difficult second period.

The second period had Falcons closing the gap almost immediately with another penalty before good work put Bruce over in the corner for a try that was not converted.   On 61 minutes was an incident which almost turned the game when Calum Clark was sin binned for a supposed late tackle on Gopperth.  I think he was extremely unlucky – he went for a charge down and was totally committed before boot hit ball.  With Clark off the Falcons forwards started to take the game to Saints and to be honest Mooj was a little lucky to stay on when he took down a maul illegally.  During the sin bin Gopperth landed another penalty and suddenly it was once again a very close match.  The flurry of substitutions seemed to hinder rather than help Saints and shortly before Dowson was substituted he made another late tackle on Gopperth.  Much has been written of this and my view is it was borderline yellow – much more of a yellow than Clark’s.  Nothing was given but it did help get the Newcastle crowd going.

We next had a tackle by Mark Sorenson (just on for Day) on Tim Swinson.  I do not think there was any intent to harm in this tackle but he did take Swinson into the air and then the act of putting him to the ground was more driven than controlled.  This gave away a penalty from which Gopperth equalised.  To be honest I half expected a red card and a very uncomfortable last 4 minutes.  Instead the referee decided a penalty was enough and Sorenson stayed on the pitch.  I was pretty sure that the citing commissioner would have something to say about that one.

So with 4 minutes to go the scores were level and all the pressure had really been on Saints for the previous period.  Could the boys respond to this?  The answer was a resounding yes.   From the resulting kick off Falcons tried to use up time and work the ball out of their 22 rather than seeking the safety of touch.  They didn’t put enough players into the breakdown and Courtney Lawes spotted the opportunity, drove in hard and removed the Falcons players from the ball and earning a turnover which Saints made good use of to put Ashton over in the corner.  Myler scored the extra two points.  Saints then controlled the ball and after the clock ran down Dickson happily booted the ball to touch and four points were duly earned.

This was a very niggly game.  There were the incidents I have discussed above but there were so many more.  Bobo trying to wind Ashton up after a clattering tackle on the Saints winger had caused a knock on but managing to instead wind up the Saints forwards who immediately destroyed the Falcons scrum and got the ball back.  Ashton then had the last laugh after his winning try by handing the ball back to Bobo with I am sure a few choice words.

Gopperth clattered Lee Dickson late and was lucky not to get a yellow.  It was that sort of game.

So the road trip part one was successful and Saints headed south with a tidy win.  The next game away at Gloucester would be even harder.

So, who caught the eye?

 Five people made it to the summary for this game.  In joint third with just over 12% each was Roger Wilson, Courtney Lawes and Ben Foden.

In second place with 17.5% was the pocket dynamo Lee Dickson returning to his old club.  Lee manages to wind up the locals who I am sure are somewhat disappointed to see him playing his best rugby for his new club and not them.  Lee is all ation and certainly gets the best out of his forwards and provides quick ball where needed to his stand off.

Talking of the stand off the clear winner however was Stephen Myler with 35% of the votes.  Stephen has his detractors but boy can he control a game.  He isn’t the flashiest number 10 but he has already seen of one of those in his Saints career.  When he is on form his control of the game is second only the Charlie Hodgson from what I have seen this season.  Well done Stephen – your fourth win of the season.

Once again my thanks to Claire for the use of her excellent action photographs.  I hope she doesn’t mind but I crop them quite heavily for use in the report to show the player.  As I scroll through them to find a picture to use I am constantly amazed at the quality.  Being a poor snapper myself I am aware of both the technical ability required and the artistic ability to time and frame the shot right.  Mind you digital cameras are a god send as each picture effectively costs nothing.  I remember when each shot cost real money and took time before you could see what you had taken.

It was a very quick turn around and a long way to go – although it was on ESPN – so my thanks to all 57 who voted.

Round Up

Well we now have a breakaway leader at the head of the leader board.  Stephen now leads with four wins ahead of Brian, Digger and Roger who have three each.  With four guaranteed games left (including Gloucester of course) it is still a wide open competition for the top step.

Full Result

Previous Winners

Vote History

Who wins?

Leaderboard

Players Used

So far this season we have used 36 different players.  I do notice however that after 30 games we still have four players who have missed three or fewer starts.  There is very obviously a starting team – the so called cup final team.  A number of players who are quality squad players and then unfortunately it does look like the tail is a little light and this means Jim cannot rotate as much as he and we would probably like.  The question is how do you balance the need to improve the squad with the restrictions of the salary cap?

MoTM: Falcons away - the road trip begins with a win.

Discussion started by ComeOnYouSaints.com , 23/04/2011 09:28

ComeOnYouSaints.com
23/04/2011 09:28

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Saint Tim
23/04/2011 09:33

Please let me know what you think.



“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

Benjamin Franklin

Tetleys Block F E143

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ClaireJ
23/04/2011 10:54

Tim - you and the other Eds can crop to your hearts content. The only thing I'd rather you didn't do is add any effects to the photos - I always think with the exception of black and white they look naff.

The Nikon D3 is a stunning camera and coupled with the 400mm it is amazing the quality you get. Until you think that each frame I take is 15Mb!

A great write up as usual, I always look forward to reading your article

Keep up the great work.

ClaireJ
RedHatPhoto.com review of 2015 photos here...


Buy photos from RedHatPhoto

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Matthew
23/04/2011 10:54

SaintTim - thanks for these. Out of interest, once all the dust is settled come the end of the season will you be able to tell us who the player of the season is according to all these votes? You'd have to weight the games according to the number of votes cast in each otherwise the figures would get distorted. It'd be interesting to see how this compares to any other 'player of the season' polls that there are, given that they'll be voted for at the season end only and these votes have been going throughout.

My guess at the moment is that it would be Wilson - he seems ever present in the top 3!

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Saint Tim
23/04/2011 12:59

I have all the details in a database and it is just a case of writing the correct queries. I have by match, player in the starting line up and the actual votes they receive.

The summer task is to improve this to make my life easier and to do what the IT geeks would call data mining to see if I can get any interesting stuff out of the stats.

I also have all of last years in the same data base so over time I am going to be able to do trends etc. This was last summer/early autumns work to get it all out of the old excel spreadsheet.



“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

Benjamin Franklin

Tetleys Block F E143

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Saint Tim
23/04/2011 13:01

Claire all I ever do is crop the image and then save it as a smaller size so I do not hit those on poorer connections too badly.



“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

Benjamin Franklin

Tetleys Block F E143

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