Preview: Cornish Pirates v NEC Harlequins


By Worried of Whitton
March 23 2006

This weekend see the match that Quins supporters have been looking forward to since the start of the season, as the Cornish Pirates take on NEC Harlequins down at Kenwyn. The match is to be played on Sunday March 26th with the revised kick off time of 15.00 Cornish Summer Time.

The match has been sold out for some time.

  Team P W D L F A PD BP Pts
1 NEC Harlequins 21 20 0 1 795 253 +542 16 96
2 Bedford Blues 21 16 1 4 694 394 +300 17 83
3 Cornish Pirates 21 15 0 6 568 462 +106 11 71

Due to the distance involved, many Quins supporters are treating this as a “European Match” and taking the opportunity for a spring weekend break down in the West Country. Truro will be an absolute riot of colour this weekend as quartered shirts mix with the “Geezer Trews”. As such the City will rival the neighbouring town neighbour Helston on the day of its floral dance, held in May. Many hundreds of Emmets from Harlequins are expected to converge on Cornwall this weekend, giving the county an early boost to the local economy as they sample the delights of pasties, cream teas and to celebrate their win quaffing St.Austell Ales. This top of the table clash may have lost some of its’ original bite as the Pirates chances of promotion this season have since been scuppered after six losses in the league., but it is a match the Harlequins have to go out and win.

Pirates most recent loss was their last match away at lowly Sedgley Park who beat them 31-21. After the match Pirates coach Jim McKay called for a "big improvement" from his side. For a second successive season the Pirates were left embarrassed by Sedgley Park. McKay stated that a serious amount of work needed to be carried out before the arrival of league leaders Harlequins "We made a lot of unforced errors and too many people underperformed out there, it's as simple as that," said McKay afterwards. "We had a pretty good game plan, but we didn't play to it and that's disappointing, but let's take nothing away from Sedgley Park either. They played very well and they took their chances when they came along." He added: "The real frustration for me is that we know what we are capable of and how we can play, but at the moment we're just too inconsistent. We allowed them too many chances and they punished us. We scored a good try in the first half and some of our play in the second half was much better, but there are still too many unforced errors creeping into our play."

Conceding a penalty just three minutes into the game, the Pirates were always playing catch-up. Five minutes later Pirates fell further behind following a catch-and-drive try which was converted to put Park 10-0 up. With their confidence growing Sedgley Park continued their attack which was rewarded with a further converted try to take the score to 17-0 matching the clock, at 17 minutes. The sunken Pirates began to fight back and when winger Matt Jess went over on 24 minutes, and Tom Barlow converting, Pirates were at last began to find a way into the game. However, Barlow's departed just moments later with a muscle strain which, Pirates hope will have cleared up in time for the Harlequins match.

Lee Jarvis replaced Barlow in the fly-half slot, but it was opposite number Jones who extended the home side's grip on proceedings when he grabbed their third try of the afternoon on the half-hour mark, which he also converted to make it 24-7. In true Quins style with half-time approaching, Sedgley Park grabbed their important, bonus fourth try when full-back Arno de Jager created the opening for flanker Richard Senior to cross, Jones again converting to put the home side 22 points up at the turn.

Substitutions in the Pirates front row early in the second half, when Nick Makin and Dan Seal came on seemed to work as the visitors slowly began to find a bit of form. Centre Kevin James reduced the arrears on 66 minutes when he found his way over for his 11th try of the season, which was converted by Jarvis. He was on the end of another move three minutes later as the Pirates threatened to salvage something late on, but their comeback was thwarted by some valiant home defending and it was the Pirates who headed home licking their wounds. Sedgley Park are Quins next opponents, and their performance seems to have improved since they last met.

Whilst the Cornish Pirates were going down in Manchester, Quins put in a fine home performance comprehensively beating a plucky Rotherham 50-10. Despite the recent poor performance of the Pirates Harlequins cannot afford to be complacent. They know that the West Country has not been kind to them this season having lost to Exeter, and two gruelling matches at Plymouth. The Pirates, like their Cornish ancestors will be out wreck Quins hopes of an away win, and like Exeter will seek some pay back for their humiliating 50-6 defeat they received at The Stoop back in November. It should be noted that only Exeter have been able to win at Kenwyn this season, with all Pirates other defeats being away from home, so the match on Sunday will once more be tough. Pirates lie third in the Division on 71 points, 12 points behind Bedford and some 25 points behind Harlequins

Quins still need 13 points from their last five games to be sure of securing top spot, and therefore a minimum of four points is required this weekend, assuming that second place Bedford will beat Plymouth. As the season draws to a close the permutations become easier to work out. I have read a post that suggested   that Bedford have to beat both Plymouth and Exeter to prevent Harlequins being promoted at their home match against Sedgley Park next weekend, assuming that is, we beat the   getting promoted.

This match preview is being published early prior to the mass transit of Quins supporters to Cornwall. As such neither the Harlequins nor Pirates Team had been announced, however in his weekly column Mike Scott has advised that  Dean Richards and his coaching staff have an interesting headache this week in selecting the side  to play on Sunday, with the return to form of many injured players, these include; Andre Vos, Ricky Nebbett, Ugo Monye, Tom Guest, Mike Brown, Andrew Mehrtens, Mark Lambert, Pablo Bouza, Augustin Costa Repetto and Alex Rogers, all of whom did not start against Rotherham at the Stoop two weeks ago. In addition Tani Fuga has also returned to training this week and he too will be considered for selection when the team is announced on Friday.

For all those travelling to the South West this weekend have a great time and cheer on Quins to another fine win, and don’t be late for the kick off, remember to put those clocks forward on Saturday night!

Come on you Quins!.

Harlequins: to be announced

Cornish Pirates: to be announced  

Match Officials:
Referee :  Roy Maybank
Touch Judges:  Richard Parker-Sedgemore, Mark Summerhayes

Lots of articles have been written about this trip already: