London Welsh v Moseley Preview

Sunday’s win at Doncaster means that London Welsh are guaranteed a place in the promotion play-offs with six matches still to play in part one of the Championship season.  Following Bedford’s 23-13 defeat in Penzance seven points separate our three clubs, although Blues have played an additional game and are yet to visit ODP, while Worcester still have to play all three of their closest rivals.

This weekend we entertain Moseley for the second time in less than a month.  The Midlanders may be languishing in the relegation places at present – and after results on New Year’s Day conspired against them they’re now down in 11th place, nine points from safety – but by snatching a 24-21 pre-Christmas win at ODP in the B&I Cup they earned only their fourth victory in league and cup this season.  In doing so they also collected just their second try bonus point of 2010-11, the first coming in a 26-26 draw at home to the Pirates.  From a Welsh perspective it marked the sole occasion that our line has been breached four times in a single game this term, and was only the third try-bonus to be conceded at home in the whole of 2010.

Most supporters would guess that our season has generally been a bit flat since our 68-22 win at Billesley in mid-October.  At that stage we’d collected 30 points from eight games (six victories and two defeats) and sat comfortably in second place, seven points behind Worcester with Bedford just two points in arrears.  Yet after sixteen rounds we have 58 points, and have recorded a further six wins and two defeats from the last eight rounds of fixtures.  So why the long faces?  Why are Phil and Mike going on record each week to defend the team’s performances?

The answer appears to lie in the bonus points column.  In the first eight weeks we gained five try-bonus points and one losing bonus at Esher, yet in the last eight rounds we’ve collected just two of each – four tries against Bristol and Bees and narrow defeats versus Worcester and Bedford.  The ten tries up at Moseley meant that with 31 tries from eight games we had the Championship’s most potent attack, but while Worcester have rattled-off six consecutive bonus point wins since their 33-29 victory at ODP, we’ve only managed 22 tries in our last eight games.  Of course, many clubs would be delighted to see their team average over three tries per game – we’ve done so only eight times in 23 years of league rugby – but the champagne rugby of the late summer and early autumn has dried-up, much as we feared it would.

However, the record of recent meetings suggests that Saturday’s game could finally see an end to that relative drought.  Our win under the intermittent floodlights in the opening round of last season’s B&I Cup saw both clubs claim a try-bonus, Moseley grabbing three second-half tries after Welsh had apparently declared at half-time before running out 38-27 (five tries to four) winners.  And our final game of the 2008-09 season, played in glorious sunshine at Esher, resulted in a 50-37 (seven tries to six) win for the ‘home’ side, while we mustn’t forget that they also ran-in three second half tries of their own in our first league encounter this season before that smash-and-grab raid four weeks ago.  Their last win over us in the league was another high-scoring affair, Welsh on the receiving end of a 40-10 drubbing in Richmond on 27th October 2007.

Mose’s top try-scorer this season is Welshman Anthony Carter, a summer signing from Doncaster, with five, while leading points scorer is Ollie Thomas, who is in his third stint with the club and has over that time amassed in excess of 1,000 points at an average of more than 10 per game.  The club have lost five consecutive games in the league since a 27-15 win over Doncaster – their only home win of the campaign – on 12th November, but when the league action resumes in three weeks’ time (after two further rounds of B&I Cup action) they entertain their local rivals from Birmingham/ Solihull before travelling down to Plymouth on the opening weekend of the Six Nations.  Next up is a trip to Rotherham before they finish the league campaign at Esher on 19th February.

With their last four fixtures against teams in the bottom six Moseley may well fancy their chances of pulling off a great escape, although they’ll be wary of memories of last season when a final day win over Bristol was rendered irrelevant by Plymouth’s win at Doncaster; consequently Ian Smith’s squad entered the play-offs in a state of shock and took three weeks to register their first win.  In the end they were saved by virtue of amassing eight bonus points from their six pool matches – another reminder, as if it were needed, of their potential try-scoring prowess.  You have been warned.