Poor Display Holds Few Comforts...

By Andy Brown
September 6 2006

Nobody could have seriously believed that this would be a losing day before it started. All the statistics from ND1 last season showed that London Welsh were at best an average side, with no pretensions of making it above lower mid-table.

Part time plodders who would do well to stay in the division, and with little news of recruitment (a notable exception being Jim Brownrigg from Bristol), it was assumed that things could only get worse for London's "other" exiles.

Although Leeds have had to rebuild a squad virtually from scratch, the premiership-class facilities, coaching and management, not to mention a squad of full time professionals and a funding handout of approaching ten times the others in the division, everybody in the division assumed the inevitable: the first day meeting between these two teams would be a good bit of match-level practise for the Leeds Tykes, and a gentle introduction to harder matches to come. A guaranteed five pointer? Most people thought so, four at the absolute worst.

So, what happened?

What happened was the meeting of a team of players who are still struggling to remember each others' names, and a team of players who had been quietly building during pre-season and were up for a huge effort to try to displace the assumed "class" of the division. Welsh were right up for the match, and spoiled the Leeds possession at every opportunity. No doubt poor contact skills from the Leeds team contributed as well, but Welsh were able to turn ball over at, it seemed, almost every breakdown. Aware of their limitations in attack, they were content to take their points in threes as the opportunities arose, two of those opportunities came from penalties and another a relatively simple drop-goal from the biggest period of sustained attacking pressure that Welsh exerted during the match, and the visitors took a 9-0 lead.

But it was still early days, and your correspondent was still relatively happy that dispite the obvious early nerves and mistakes, there was plenty of time to recover and cruise to the inevitable win. And indeed the first points came from a relatively easy Leigh Hinton penalty. But the expected surge in performance didn't really materialise, and time and again possession was spilled either in contact or simply while running, allowing Welsh to continuously kick over the top and relieve the minimal pressure that was being exerted. 9-3 at half-time.

Again, not too worried. A poor first half, but the fitter, more professional outfit would be bolstered by the half-time team talk and would come out with all guns blazing, and put right the wrongs of the first half. It took a while, but eventually the Tykes went ahead with an eight man shove with Martin Schustermann – newly sponsored by TykesRugby.co.uk – coming away with the credit for the score (although at the time, Rob Rawlinson was announced as the scorer). Hinton duly converted, and the Tykes were finally in the lead, and the flood gates were just about to open….

Er, no, not exactly! Realising just how well they had been doing up to now, London Welsh clearly were not going to roll over and submit to defeat, and they came back with some meaty attacks, rucking and recycling up against the Tykes line that finally saw a reward, with the handfull of Welsh fans in the South Stand seemingly making the only noise. With the conversion good, Welsh were once again six points ahead, with ten minutes to go. Leeds tried to apply pressure to score the killer blow, but time after time they were repelled, not least because of their own poor handling. As the final whistle went after another Tykes knock on, the Welsh players raised their arms in relief – against all the pundits' predictions, they'd won.

What's more they deserved it.

To my mind, Leeds looked like what they are, a group of players who haven't had a great deal of time together, and were beaten by a team of players who may not have been as individually skilled, but were certainly sure of their game plan, their team mates, and their targetting of their opponent's weaknesses.

So, all doom, gloom and despondency?

Not all. We have constantly been told during the off season how hard the ND1 forwards are, and how we'd struggle up front. "If your front five can hack it, then your backs will be the real difference between you and your opponents". Our pack more than held their own, and in scrummaging took a couple against the head – almost unheard of at any level about social 4^th XVs. Apart from the first couple of lineouts where there was a bit of a stutter, the lineouts worked well. Breakdowns, however, still need work.

By contrast, our backs were not all they were supposed to be. The wingers didn't seem to see much action – strange as at least one of them was a very classy premiership player last year – and the number of knock-ons and turnovers in contact were simply unacceptable. There were a few bright moments though, with at least some attempts to keep the defence guessing; cross-field kicks that didn't quite find the mark, scything runs from full-back that just ran out of support. However the service from scrum-half seemed a little slow and the fly-half decision making was also not so swift, allowing the defenders to get close to the gain line and putting more pressure on the attackers, with the inevitable consequences.

Stuart Lancaster stated that his team did not underestimate London Welsh, and that the team were most certainly aware of how dangerous they could be. However, dispite the best efforts of all the coaching, it's impossible to circumvent human nature; the pro team would have thought it would be a good win and would have gone on to the pitch with this at the back of their minds. Perhaps this game will turn out to have been a blessing in disguise; now the team know that they have to work at it to get results. What is certain is that the Tykes will not play this badly again.

Last year's champions only lost one match, but in fact could have lost five and still got promoted; one bad result is not the end of the world.

I don't believe anyone seriously thought that we would perform precisely as well as the Quins did last year. Some of the other supporters' sites from ND1 seems have assumed that we – the Tykes fans – were arrogant enough to assume it would be a cakewalk. If anyone was seriously labouring under that delusion, you should have had it knocked out of you by this performance.