London Welsh v Birmingham & Solihull Preview
By Mark W-J
September 9 2010
London Welsh bring up the curtain on their 54th year at Old Deer Park with the visit of Birmingham Solihull on Saturday (11th September). Based upon current league standings after just two rounds of fixtures in the Championship season, the match pitches the second-best team in Surrey (or, if you prefer, the second best team in Greater London) against the second-best team in the West Midlands.
Bees finished last season rock-bottom of the Championship on -9 (that’s minus nine) points, having lost 21 of their 22 fixtures and claimed a single draw, 31-31, at the Cornish Pirates. They also suffered a 15 point deduction after going into administration last autumn, and lost all five fixtures in the British & Irish Cup, conceding over 200 points in the process. Following the loss of almost an entire squad over the New Year period, coach Russell Earnshaw was forced to rebuild his player base, helped by the investment in the new ‘phoenix’ company ‘Birmingham & Solihull Rugby Club Limited’ which emerged from the ashes of ‘Birmingham & Solihull RFC’. New faces included two former London Welshmen – flanker Rob Bell, who left ODP last Christmas having failed to settle in London, and ex-Druids prop Dave Orme – although both players were released over the summer. Having accepted that the relegation play-offs were inevitably waiting in the spring, Earnshaw embarked on a ‘pre-season’ with his new squad, which enabled them to approach the six game mini-season in peak condition. And,how it showed. Back-to-back wins over localrivals Moseley (24-17) and Coventry (25-18) meant that the Bees’ destiny was intheir own hands come the start of May, when their 38-34 win at Billesley Common secured their place in the Championship at the expense of Cov – and all this despite another two point penalty for fielding an unregistered player.
There are plenty of people who point to the fact that Cov finished 21 points clear of Bees in the first stage of the season yet were relegated in their stead as a fundamental flaw in the Championship structure. This has been addressed by the RFU’s Competitions committee, who have decreed that this season each team in the relegation play-offs will carry-forward one point foreach victory gained in the 22 league matches. The additional five points would have been enough to save Cov from the drop – but if Bees hadn’t had the two point deduction, they’d have survived onthe head-to-head record. Further muddying the waters is the new rule which states that any Championship club ‘entering an insolvency event’ will be automatically placed in the relegation play-offs and deducted 10 points in the play-off stage.
Bees have started the 2010-11 season in much the same way as they started their last two terms at this level – with back-to-back defeats. The opening day thrashing at the hands of newly-relegated Worcester was perhaps to be expected, but there was a general feeling that Bees could take encouragement from their 48-3 defeat, especially after having two tries disallowed. However, their debut appearance at Damson Park,which they now share with Solihull Moors FC, resulted in a 41-28 (six tries to three) defeat to Nottingham last Sunday. Welsh had scored four tries to nil up at Meadow Lane the previous Sunday – butchering maybe half a dozen further chances - yet drew a blank down in Penzance while the Green & Whites finally found their scoring touch after being kept at bay by the Exiles. Consequently we go into Sunday’s game as the second-lowest scorers in the Championship thus far – only Plymouth with 22 have scored fewer than our 30 points in the opening two rounds.
Many followers of the Championship have identified Welsh’s backs as potentially the most explosive inthe division – it was certainly that threat which Pirates were determined to nullify last weekend – and the statistics thus far show that no team has scoreda greater proportion of its points (67%) from tries. Conversely, our discipline has been our Achilles heel, as no team has conceded a greater proportion of its points (84%) from penalties. It’s interesting to note that 73% of the 59 tries scored in the first two weeks of the Championship have been scored by backs, up from 62% overall last season, and for four teams –Welsh, Bees, Nottingham and Plymouth – the forwards are yet to get on the scoresheet. Whether this is as a result of the highly-acclaimed and widely-publicised ‘new interpretation’ of the laws which Premier Rugby would have us believe they drew-up and instigated is a mootpoint; any argument that it’s simply a by-product of starting the season in August when the pitches are still relatively firm would be strongly countered by anyone who witnessed the games at Penzance and, in particular, Sunbury.
Despite having spent 10 of thelast 11 years at level two of the pyramid, Bees always struggled to attract crowds to Sharmans Cross Road and have often been ridiculed by the supposedly ‘senior’ clubs for their lackof support and facilities. It is felt that the move to Damson Park is a big step in the right direction, but as Welsh have found, the attraction of Premiership football in the big cities is a major distraction to the paying public. The success of Worcesterand Exeter inrecent years, building crowds up to over 10,000 as they realised the Premiership dream, has shown that people can be drawn to a winning team. Yet when Bees finished fourth in the old National One in 2003-04 – the year the Warriors finally won promotion – they attracted an average crowd of only 665. By electing to stage home games on a Sunday – partly driven by the impracticalities of ground-sharing – the club is hoping to draw in the crowds who play or watch elsewhere in Birmingham and the surrounding area on aSaturday afternoon. As for building awinning team – how about leaving it another week?
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![[:wor kid:]](/phorum-5.1.15/mods/smileys/images/13.gif "[:wor kid:]")
better suits his style of play ?
Impressed by the set up at BEES ?
convinced by the new coach that his ambition would be matched by the club ?
etc .....
Conv missed
Conv kick
12-6
Conv missed
Conv kick
33-9
On the plus side, our backs looked dangerous every time they ran the ball - even when we were starting from behind our own line - and Epi Taione forced me to eat my words when he stepped onto the hallowed turf. At the start of the game I was surprised that Errie seemed to have been dropped, but Josh and Liam on the wings were both excellent. It'll be interesting to see how good Phil's man-management skills are when he's consistently rotating his starting XV and guys like Matt Corker (last week) and Errie are left kicking their heels.
Worcester needed a couple of late scores to beat Rotherham, so while they're still the only team with a 100% record they're still in touching distance of Welsh, Pirates and Bedford. And with Leicester needing two tries in the last few minutes (including a penalty try from the last play) to put Exeter away at Welford Road, is there evidence that the gap between the Championship and the Premiership is closing?