Prof’s Positives Week 36: Wasps & Leicester


By The Prof
May 17 2003

Away to Wasps (sorry London Wasps), last game of the season, Wasps were on a run of 11 straight wins, they were the in form side in England. Supporters were hoping for little more than nice weather and a better experience than we had at Loftus Road last season (which wouldn’t be hard).

Even the staunchest fans were thinking we would be beaten and were hoping for our side not to be humiliated. After all six of our most influential players would be missing: Keith Wood (long term injuries), Jason Leonard (rested), Will Greenwood (rested), Ace Tiatia (injured), Alex Codling (unavailable) and Billy Fulton (injured). At least Evs, JK and Turner had almost the full squad to choose from other than them.

The Quinssa coach journey to the ground was fun as always - the fact that Will didn’t get his lunch in time and had to revert to his emergency Ginsters supply and that the driver was a little confused by the name of the team we were playing and started to head back to London did little to dampen our spirits.

Having been to watch rugby at Adams Park before (a few of us went to support Stade Francais against Wasps in the Parker Pen Cup) I knew what to expect, but for many it was their first journey to the High Wycombe stadium and all were pleasantly surprised. It is infinitely better than Loftus Road although the turnstiles could be a tad more generous for the svelte chaps amongst us..

As the Quins players came onto the pitch some terrible tune from Jason and his Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat was playing (at least that’s what Binky said it was). You could see that every member of the team was fired up, they stood, hands on hips, staring at their opposite numbers. The body language said it all “were Quins and we’re here to beat you”.

The game has already been well reported elsewhere but highlights must have been the overall defence, Ugo Monye’s starting debut with two scores to his name, Tani Fuga’s break, Chris Bell picking up his opposite number and carrying him off the pitch. The whole pack should get a mention, they were fantastic, Jon Dawson deserves special mention for his complete destruction of Dowd in the scrum. Dawson looks to me to be one of the top scrummaging props of his age in the country and credit for bringing him on so well must go to Evs for spotting his talent in the first place and to JK for coaching him since. Burkey had a fine game, tackling well and the two kicks to Monye were perfectly weighted. Mel Deane had an average game, thankfully since he joined us his average has been excellent, he always breaks the gain line, makes big tackles and if he would just look to offload just one second earlier he will set up a load of tries.

The fact that the travelling Quins support made more noise than the locals was rather nice too. But it was nice of them to sing that song to out captain – “Andre, Andre, Andre – Vos, Vos, Vos” well it sounded like that to my ear. Hipflasks were found, Will bought two bacon rolls and much fun was had by all. The final whistle came the Quins fans erupted into cheers and dancing, the players came out to thank the travelling fans and the chatter was all “I told you so” “Doubles over Irish and Wasps, does it get any better than that?”, “Never in doubt” and “Right, where’s the bar”.

The Wasps fans were in generous spirit in the bar after with a lot of inter fan banter toing and froing. Old friendships were rekindled and a few sore throats were cooled and lubricated. ‘The Mighty Quin’ was ‘sung’ which led to the music being turned up and Big Trev Leota came over and offered to buy us drinks – top man that Trev, not as nice as his cousin Tani though.

The journey back to the Stoop involved fewer wrong turns than the journey up and even more fun was had by all. The celebrations continued into the wee small hours with some regular boarders still being grounded for the length of their celebrations.

So the win meant we were guaranteed a place in the Zurich Wildcard matches because of our seventh place finish and the other results meant we would play Leicester, so then came Wednesday and a visit by the Tigers. After the display against Wasps the supporters were cheerful and optimistic and the unallocated seating meant that the group who were together at Adams park could reassemble to cheer the team to victory again.

The Quins side came out firing again and the first half just carried on from the great display against Wasps. Jase and Shaggy were back in the team and the front five were all changed since the weekend, how nice it is to be able to change so many players and still have a very good starting line up.

Dippy had a huge game again, how many times have we said that this season? He was fantastic at the restarts in the first half, great at ripping the ball out of the tackle, great at the back of the line – class act all round. Greenwood performed well alongside Mel Deane who was another close contender for man of the match, but perhaps the rest had dulled Shaggy’s attacking edge because he put in a couple of grubber kicks for Dan Luger to chase when perhaps keeping the ball in hand might have been the better option. Again the pack as a whole did well with Tani, Roy, Andre and Miall really standing out.

The play by Dippy winning the ball and Greenwood taking it on and passing to Tani to score was wonderful, simple quality rugby (but a gift of a try according to dear old Deano – bless!) The attack by Luger which faltered only to be continued by Powell and converted into five points by Deane was also good simple, successful rugby. It is the last time we will see some of the players in a Quins shirt at The Stoop, we wish all the leavers the very best in the future (apart from against us of course).

So two games in less than a week, one away one at home, one against Wasps one Leicester, two wins and five tries – not bad really. It’s a shame we couldn’t have kept Leicester under the cosh in the second half and they did come back at us and reduce the points deficit from what looked likely to be in the twenties to only three but we know what we have to do up at Welford Road – play well and win.

If only that touch judge (Savage?) had had the bottle to penalise Leicester for the thuggery of Garforth, West, Corry, Rowntree and Kronfeld – oh well, let’s not be too disappointed we won again!

The final event this week was the joint Quinssa General Meeting and the CAW awards and social. Many thanks must go to all who helped organise the night. Sixty members turned up to the Deb Bar for the evening, a number which exceeded all our expectations. No votes were taken because there was only one person standing for each position. The Quinssa Committee is:

A raffle and quiz were held with the raffle raising a lot of money for Quinssa, the minutes will be appearing on the Quinssa site soon.

At the CAW social afterwards our end of season awards were given out with the winners being:

Contribution to the Message Board:

  1. SleepyHollow
  2. Binky
  3. Steevo

Best Regular Column:

  1. KevT
  2. Prof
  3. Kwin

Champagne Moment (these were re-enacted by kwin, Innuendo Andy and myself):

  1. The Vos/Williams try
  2. Dawson’s 150y break against the Natal Sharks
  3. Shaggy’s ‘drunken disco dancer’ try

Real Ale Moment:

  1. The abortive trip to Bristol
  2. kwin’s "I've been expelled" posting
  3. Prof’s high balls

Favourite Opposition Fans:

  1. Stade Francais
  2. London Irish
  3. Caerphilly

Match Report of the Season:

  1. Sale (sorry Sharks) v Quins by Binky
  2. Quins v LI by kwin
  3. Quins v Sale by BognorQuin

Best Away Experience:

  1. Stade Francais
  2. London Irish
  3. Caerphilly

Photograph of the Season:

  1. Lander Signals - by kwin
  2. Greenwood scores - by Simon Jones
  3. Sun Setting on Contepomi - by Binky


There was one final award which was the Editors Special award, everyone who has contributed to the site through writing reports, columns, postings or who have sent in photographs were all considered.
Special thanks must go to Worried of Whitton, AlanQuin, PerryGo, sb and KevT for their regular reports and columns and to RobShew and Simon Jones for their splendid photographs. But after we had discussed every option we both came up with the same person – KevT who has written a regular preview column, has interviewed players, has organised press passes for every away game, has written columns and has made many high quality postings – thanks for all your hard work KevT.

So it’s almost the end of the first season for this site and it has been a lot of fun and a lot of work for kwin and me but it has surpassed our expectations, with your help it will continue in the same style next season and will become better and better.

So that was week 36 of the season, beating Wasps and Leicester, the announcement of six new signings (profiles of them all will appear here very soon) , the setting up of Quinssa and the first CAW awards – not bad all in all. We just have to beat Leicester on Sunday and we’ll be in with a great chance of getting to the Heineken Cup next season.

Come on you Quinssa!