Plymouth Albion v London Welsh Preview
By Mark W-J
November 24 2011
There may still be a month until Christmas, but we move into the second half of the league stage of the Championship season this weekend. At the midway point Welsh are third in the table, with just three points covering the top five clubs. Our hosts this Saturday, Plymouth Albion, are in tenth place, ten points adrift of eighth-placed Doncaster in the all-important final promotion play-off spot.
Albion qualified for the top eight in the inaugural Championship season thanks to a final day win at Doncaster, but they finished bottom of their pool with a single win, albeit over their rivals from across the border, Cornish Pirates. Last season they finished 10th, but three wins in the relegation play-offs saw them finish third in their pool, a full 10 points ahead of the Bees. Unfortunately the lack of progress this term saw Director of Rugby Graham Dawe part company with the club this week after twelve and a half years in charge. His first game in charge came on his 40th birthday, 4th September 1999 - to put that in context, Welsh, under the leadership of Clive Griffiths, lost 28-22 at newly-promoted Henley that afternoon: we’ve had six Head Coaches during Dawe’s reign. After finishing 4th in Three South in his first season, behind Esher, Penzance-Newlyn and North Walsham, his team won promotion in their 125th anniversary season with a 100% record (26 wins and 16 try bonus points), with three Cornish clubs (Launceston, Penzance-Newlyn and Redruth) finishing in the top five. By the time they lost 28-22 at Wharfedale on 8th December 2001 en route to a second successive promotion, they had won 41 consecutive matches, a National League record.
This is Albion’s 13th year at Level Two in the pyramid, including a three year spell from 1989-92, and they’ve twice finished in third place, behind Worcester & Orrell in 2003-04 and Bristol & Exeter the following season. Our first meeting at this level on 14th September 2002, Dawe played in the front row - he made 25 league appearances that season, including one off the bench - while he was joined on the field by Will James and Dan Ward-Smith, with current Harlequins lock Ollie Kohn on the bench. History will record his team’s diminishing returns over the last five or six years and many supporters will not mourn the passing of the famed 14-man maul, yet his unparalleled achievements in unearthing and developing new talent should never be overlooked.
The new man in the hotseat is former Exeter coach Peter Drewett, who has more recently been coaching England Students. His immediate objective will be to start picking up wins against the sides in the top half of the table, something which the club failed to do last season and have managed just once this term - against Rotherham in week three. They are one of only two clubs not to have collected a try-bonus this season - the other is Esher, who did earn their first point of the campaign in last weeks 15-20 defeat at home to Leeds. Despite picking-up try-bonuses in two of their play-of fixtures last season, they haven’t scored four tries in a ‘league’ fixture since a 36-22 win at Moseley on 30th October last year; only Esher have scored fewer than Albion’s 214 points, and 20 tries scored represents the third-worst attacking stats in the division after Esher (12) and Leeds (19). Full-back James, Love, a summer signing from Hartpury College, is the league’s third-highest scorer with 156, behind Nottingham’s Kieran Hallett (163) and Gary Law of Rotherham (161). Prop Gareth Evans is top try-scorer with three, while Love, centre Bevon Armitage and No.8 Aaron Carpenter have two apiece. Carpenter has scored in each of Plymouth’s last two games, and also crossed for Canada in their 25-20 win over Tonga during the Rugby World Cup.
Another looming threat for Albion comes from Cornwall in the shape of the Pirates. Although Sunday’s defeat at Bristol knocked them from first to fourth in the table, they have gained outline planning permission for the Stadium for Cornwall; furthermore they have reached an agreement with Plymouth Argyle FC for their home games to be played at the Pilgrims’ Home Park stadium on an interim basis should they gain promotion this year and the S4C not be ready for the start of next season. Although the terms of the agreement include some form of compensation for Albion you can’t help but feel that crowds at the Brickfields would be decimated by the lure of Premiership rugby just across the city. As it stands, this year is the most competitive we’ve seen at this level for six or seven years, with all of the current top four having topped the standings at some point, but with all of the leading sides taking points from one another the Plymouth board have clearly decided that changes are required to haul the club away from the spectre of relegation. The timing of the decision, within days of the joint Pirates-Argyle announcement which puts so much more pressure on retaining the club’s Championship status, may be more than coincidental. So with a new man at the helm and a relegation scrap to be avoided this has all the hallmarks of a potential banana skin for the Welsh. Our recent form is decidedly average, although our Head Coach seems much happier with the performances than the supporters. Are we really so difficult to please?
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15. Alex Davies, 14. Will Hurrell, 13. Paul Mackey, 12. Hudson Tonga’uiha*, 11. Joe Ajuwa, 10. Gordon Ross*, 9. Rob Lewis, 1. Guillermo Roan, 2. Vili Ma’asi*, 3. Shawn Pittman*, 4. Adam Brown, 5. Martin Purdy, 6. Jon Mills ©, 7. Mike Denbee, 8. Lee Beach.
Replacements: 16. Saul Nelson, 17. Billy Moss, 18. Matt Corker, 19. Ed Jackson, 20. Jack Moates, 21. Simon Whatling, 22. James Lewis.
