Birmingham Solihull v London Welsh Preview

By Mark W-J
November 18 2010

After back-to-back meetings with the Championship's top three sides, London Welsh visit the league's bottom-placed team, Birmingham Solihull, on Sunday afternoon. The Bees have moved in with Solihull Moors FC at Damson Parkway, but despite two wins in the first half of the season (two more than in the entire 'league' section of 2009-10) they still find themselves six points adrift at the bottom.

The Bees’ Great Escape from relegation last season has been well-documented; the merits and associated drawbacks of the play-off system have been debated ad nauseum on various internet chatrooms. What can’t be questioned, however, is the way in which Russell Earnshaw and his squad played the rules to their distinct advantage. They didn’t actually do anything contrary to the laws of the game and the Championship regulations in particular; you can argue (as many have) that they didn’t act in accordance with the spirit of the game by going into administration, taking the 15 point deduction and focussing their entire efforts on surviving the play-offs; but you can’t dispute the fact that they used the laws to suit their peculiar circumstances and survived as a result.

This season began in a similar vein for the Bees – six defeats from six and not even a bonus point to show for their efforts. But then in week seven they scored half a dozen tries in a 38-14 demolition of Esher – the same Esher who had beaten Welsh on a rainy Friday night just nine days previously. The bonus point was secured within the first 30 minutes, and when the Surrey side threatened to claw their way back with two tries of their own early in the second half the home team simply responded in kind. Sadly, only 429 hardy souls turned out to watch, the lowest attendance recorded in the Championship this season. Six days later they came unstuck against the resurgent Doncaster (33-14) before blowing a gilt-edged opportunity to lift themselves off the bottom of the league in the second city derby with Moseley. In front of the only four-figure crowd seen at Damson Park so far (1,062), the visitors’ replacement prop Yann Thomas crashed over for his first senior try in the final minute, namesake Ollie’s conversion sealing a 22-20 win. Yet what goes around, comes around – and on the last day of October the Bees claimed their second win of the year, a last-gasp try from lock Dan Sanderson allowing the returning Mark Woodrow to seal a 35-33 victory at Bristol.

Woodrow was a Birmingham Solihull folk-hero long before he struck that conversion at the Memorial Stadium: it was his six penalties which laid the foundations for the most famous result in the club’s history, the 28-24 win over Wasps at Adams Park (then called the Causeway Stadium) in the 2003-04 cup quarter-finals. The Wasps’ XV that afternoon – although billed in the press as ‘under-strength’ – contained the likes of Voyce, Erinle, Abbott, Rudd, Payne, Leota, Green, Shaw, Birkett, Skivington, and Rees, while the bench included names such as Haskell, Howley, van Gisbergen, Gotting and Purdy. On the back of his kicking prowess, Woodrow earned a full-time contract with Bristol, but soon found himself back at Dings Crusaders, from whom he’d originally joined Bees in 2003 after initially making his breakthrough with Newbury. There followed a short spell at Nottingham and two years at Doncaster, before he returned to Birmingham for their promotion-winning 08-09 season. He departed for Viadana in Italy after just two games of last season, when the first rumours of financial worries surfaced, before winging his way back to the UK and Cinderford, in National One, for the first two months of this season. In the three matches since he returned to Bees, he’s kicked 34 points, from eight penalties and five conversions.

As a result of Moseley’s unexpected 27-15 win over Doncaster last Friday (their first home win of the season bringing the Knights’ four-game winning streak to an abrupt halt) the Bees are now six points behind 11th-placed Esher. They’re the only team to have conceded 50 tries in the Championship so far, and nobody else has given away as many try-bonus points (eight). Winger Simon Hunt is top points scorer with 57, and also the leading try-scorer on seven, including a hat-trick in the defeat to Moseley. For the Welsh, Gordon Ross has 87 points, Aled Thomas’ six penalties against Pirates move him up to 71 and Josh Drauniniu’s eleven tries put him on 55.

Last Sunday’s victory over the Pirates should give Welsh a bit of a lift after two narrow defeats. It seems strange to suggest that the team in fourth place in the table should need a confidence boost, but there was a feeling amongst the supporters that our poor record against the top sides was creating a psychological barrier. Not that we should underestimate this weekend’s opponents, of course, mindful of the fact that the bonus point in our first meeting with the Bees was only secured with the final play of the game. One of the side-effects of being ranked as a top-four side is that everybody wants to cut you down to size; and it’s how you react when faced with such a proposition that decides whether you deserve your place at the top of the pile.

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

Date: 18/11/2010 08:43

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