London Welsh v Exeter - Match Preview

By Mark W-J
December 30 2009

The first weekend of 2010 sees Exeter Chiefs visit Old Deer Park, although for the first time this season they travel without the prefix ‘league leaders’ after suffering back-to-back defeats. Last Sunday, in front of a crowd of 7,405 they lost 16-25 to their nearest rivals, Bristol, and relinquished their unbeaten home record which stretched back twenty matches to the second week of last season.

The Chiefs’ 23-13 loss at Plymouth a fortnight ago brought to an end their unbeaten start to the season and was also their first defeat in 16 league games stretching back to April. That surpassed the 14 game unbeaten run of last season which started and finished with defeats to the eventual champions, Leeds. Much has been made in the press and on various websites of Exeter’s belief that the pitch at Brickfields was unplayable and the dissatisfaction of visiting supporters with Plymouth’s use of the rolling maul. It’s fair to say that you know what to expect when playing Albion – although, as Welsh can testify, they’re also more than capable of playing an expansive game – but it’s a shame that rival fans pour scorn on the effective use of a valid tactic, especially after we – the supporters – had complained loudly about its temporary abolition under the ELVs.

The maul was a tactic which Welsh also used to great effect under Adrian Davies, although the irony of a former Wales fly-half turning a club renowned for its running rugby into a 10-man catch-and-drive team wasn’t lost on the players or supporters! It’s also worth remembering that when Exeter found themselves 12 points down inside 15 minutes at ODP in 2004 they adopted the very same approach as a means of getting back into the game. On that afternoon three tries from the maul - two for blindside flanker Siaosi Vaili and one penalty try for collapsing – saw them gain a foothold before their backs secured the win. The perfunctory reaction of head coach, Ian Bremner, when a home supporter suggested that his team’s approach was boring was; ‘Look at the scoreboard…’

Defeat at ODP in January 2006 saw the end of Bremner’s reign – it’s a measure of how far Welsh had fallen that the defeat of a team which had finished the previous season as runners-up to Bristol was enough to see the coach removed from his post. Unfortunately that was the last win for Welsh in the series, although many home fans were sufficiently impressed with our performance in the 13-9 defeat at Sandy Park in October to suggest that we are exactly the kind of team they’d want to avoid in the play-offs. It has been intimated that the drop-off in league form has been due to the belief that a play-off place is already secured and that the players have consequently taken their collective eye off the ball, but you can bet that losing the top-spot to Bristol will have minds completely focussed on Saturday.

With three of the twelve Championship clubs having suffered points deductions after entering administration there has been much comment from above about the implausibility of supporting two tiers of professional rugby and therefore the possibility of increasing the size of the Premiership to accommodate Exeter and Bristol. There’s no doubt that Sandy Park is an impressive facility, and last weekend’s crowd has pushed the average attendance for the season to a shade under 5,000; the lowest crowd - 3,573 for the visit of Doncaster - is almost 1,000 more than the record league crowd at ODP (2,600 versus Worcester in 1998). And it was Worcester’s owner, Cecil Duckworth, who added his support to the expansion plans last week, although a glance at the Premiership table and the upcoming fixtures suggests that maybe self-interest rather than benevolence is at the heart of his argument. This weekend’s fixture between Leeds and Bath at Headingley will have huge implications for the relegation battle, with a home win potentially plunging Wuss to the bottom of the pile. Bath and Leeds meet again at The Rec on the final day of the season.

While Aled Thomas is still third-highest scorer in the league with 132, despite a faltering success rate, Exeter’s Gareth Steenson now has 147 points, having landed 59 from 69 attempts (85.5%). The Chiefs’ defence has – as you would expect from a team which has spent nearly four months at the top of the table – been extremely tight; before last week’s game they had conceded only 41.7% of their points from tries (the league’s lowest) and 46% from penalties and drop-goals (the league’s highest). The try-bonus gained by Bristol was the first the Chiefs have conceded this season, and the first time the home try-line at Sandy Park has been breached four times since they beat Cornish Pirates 39-29 in January 2008 - and 19 of the Pirates’ points that day were scored by Gareth Steenson.

Ten years ago, London Welsh beat Exeter twice at Old Deer Park in the space of seven days. On Sunday 2^nd January 2000, in our first game without Andy Currier following his departure for Sixways, we nearly threw away a 15-3 half-time lead before claiming a narrow 18-14 victory in Round Four of the Tetley Bitter Cup. Tries from Scott Roskell and Vaughan Going and eight points from Andy Lee were enough to earn a home tie with Coventry in Round Five en route to the infamous quarter-final with Northampton. And six days later three converted tries in the second half – another two for Scott and one from fellow centre Simon Frost – saw us overturn a 3-7 deficit to win 24-14. The following season we secured a league double (24-18 at the County Ground, 24-15 at ODP), but we’ve won only two of the last 20 meetings in league and cup. Can we kick ‘em while they’re down – or will they get up again…?

Posted by: The Dragons\\\' Den (IP Logged)

Date: 30/12/2009 19:09

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