Worcester Warriors: Match Preview

By Prof
February 17 2005

Last October Quins went to Sixways for their first game against Worcester. The travelling fans were expecting a turnaround in fortune, we had lost our first four games of the season & had only played at all well in the one game away to Newcastle where a dodgy penalty try left us defeated by 1 point.

Worcester had the week before been thrashed 57-3 away at Sale and had also lost their first four games. The game itself was very one sided, Worcester came out firing and simply blew Quins away winning the game 33-7 and getting a try bonus too.

We were out-muscled up front and Powell and Delport kept us pinned in our own half with good tactical kicking. As Mark Evans has said “They comprehensively outplayed us back in October to claim their first victory of the campaign and followed this up with other impressive victories away to Northampton Saints and at home against London Wasps, Leeds Tykes and London Irish.”

But what will happen this time, well Worcester still have an excellent set piece with John Kingston describing their scrum as “as good as anyone’s in the league except Leicester’s”, but Quins’ tight scrummaging has improved greatly since the start of the season and, while we still have players unavailable in the front row (Tiatia banned, Fitz Gerald injured and Lambert only just coming back from injury), Ceri Jones has shown himself to be a tighthead of real quality. Fuga starts instead of Tiatia and he is probably the stronger scrummager too.

The second row of Quins is probably the best lineout pairing we have, Simon Maling has started to show his class in the last few games and Jim Evans, who has only just returned after dislocating his shoulder pre-season, has shown that he is back to top form. The battle in the lineout is going to be one of the deciding factors in the game, Maling and Evans will certainly have their work cut out against the excellent partnership of 6’8” Craig Gillies and ex-Quin Tim Collier.

The other ex-Quins in the squad are captain Pat Sanderson at openside, Matt Powell at scrum-half and Daren O’Leary on the wing opposite Ugo Monye. Powell may well be the key to victory, if he is allowed to play his own game box-kicking Worcester into good field position then Quins could be in trouble again but if Steve So’oialo and Andre Vos can get in his face the game may swing our way.

John Kingston described Worcester as “having a great structure to their game and being having a very territory driven game plan”. He also mentioned their excellent driving maul which gave them two tries against us back in October.

JK added “The biggest danger [clubs have been in] is to see Worcester as being different because they came up last year, they are a Zurich Premiership team and are as good as any other”.

Outside of the Worcester pack JK said the main dangers would come from Powell’s tactical kicking at scrum half; Delport’s kicking and running from fullback, even though he has lost a bit of pace after the injury he picked up against us; Brown at fly-half who has been running the game well and who has had a well deserved call up to the England A squad and Giscard Pieters who might come off the bench as an impact player on the wing.

Quins have made just two forced changes to the starting lineup that thrashed Gloucester, Tani Fuga comes in for the banned Ace Tiatia and George Harder returns from injury to replace the injured Mel Deane. Fuga should bring a little more restraint to the hooker position and his lineout throwing is generally better (something which could be vital for this game) and Harder is more of a line breaker than Deane but he may not be quite as good defensively.

From what I can see the main battles to be won on the field will be between the two driving mauls and between So’oialo v Powell; Maling & Evans v Collier & Gillies and Vos v Sanderson. All of these contests should be excellent, the difference in style between the athletic Quins locks and the dasypygal Worcester pairing.

If you look at the performances against us this season three have really stood out: Northampton, Castres (A) and Worcester. Worcester played a near perfect game against us and after the game Steve Leyshon (the referee) said “you could see how fired up Worcester were when they came onto the pitch, you could see in their eyes that they wanted that win”.

Worcester have won four of their last six ZP games and Quins have won four and drawn one of their last seven ZP games gaining 20 points along the way. Both teams won last time out. There is very little to choose between them at the moment but with home advantage and the confidence gained from an excellent performance against Gloucester I predict a Quins win by less than ten points.

This is certainly has the potential to be one of the games people watch rugby for, it’s a sellout between two evenly matched sides where the result matters and with both sides really wanting and needing a win.

Roll on Saturday

Come On You Quins!

NEC Harlequins:
15. Tom Williams, 14. Simon Keogh, 13. Gavin Duffy, 12. George Harder, 11. Ugo Monye, 10. Jeremy Staunton, 9. Steve So’oialo, 1. Mike Worsley, 2. Tani Fuga, 3. Ceri Jones, 4. Jim Evans, 5. Simon Maling, 6. Nick Easter, 7. Andre Vos (c), 8. Tony Diprose
Replacements: 16. James Hayter, 17. Jon Dawson, 18. Simon Miall, 19. Roy Winters, 20. Luke Sherriff, 21. Dafydd James, 22. Andy Reay

Worcester Warriors:
15. Thinus Delport, 14. Daren O'Leary, 13. Dale Rasmussen, 12. Thomas Lombard, 11. Ben Hinshlewood, 10. James Brown, 9. Matt Powell, 8. Brad MacLeod-Henderson, 7. Pat Sanderson (c), 6. Drew Hickey, 5. Craig Gillies, 4. Tim Collier, 3. Chris Horsman, 2. Andre Van Niekerk, 1. Tony Windo
Replacements: 16. Lee Fortey, 17. Phil Murphy, 18. Ben Daly, 19. Saosi Vaili, 20. Neil Cole, 21. Tommy Hayes, 22. Giscard Pieters