London Welsh Bumper Christmas & New Year Match Preview!

By Mark W-J
December 22 2011

For London Welsh, 2011 draws to a closed with two home fixtures over the festive period. On Boxing Day we entertain our neighbours fromEsher, while our visitors on New Year’s Eve are Moseley. With both clubs currently in the bottom four, these are the kind of fixtures which should give the home support plenty of Christmas cheer – but London Welsh fans know better than to make rash predictions.

To most London Welsh supporters, Boxing Day is - and always will be - synonymous with Stradey Park. Our first Christmas tour, in 1885, took in Swansea on Christmas Eve, Newport on Boxing Day, a South Wales XV again at Newport on the 28^th, finishing at Cardiff on the 30^th, while our first visit to Llanelli was on Christmas Eve 1886. The fixture didn’t switch to Boxing Day until after the Second World War, and continued on that date for almost half a century until the advent of professionalism saw league fixtures take priority. Esher adopted their Black and Amber jerseys at the insistence of one of their founding members who was from Newport, so there’s an element of symmetry in meeting them on the anniversary of our first visit to Rodney Parade.

This hasn’t been a happy season for Mike Schmid’s team, who are rooted to the bottom of the Championship with just two points from 14 fixtures, 35 points behind eighth-placed Doncaster. Consequently, should the Knights gain one point more from their local derby at home to Leeds than our visitors earn at Old Deer Park, then Esher’s involvement in the relegation play-offs will become a mathematical certainty. They had to wait until round 11 to secure their first point in a 15-20 home defeat to Leeds, while they scored four tries in losing 22-34 to Nottingham a fortnight later. In the autumn they went 254 minutes without scoring a try, failing to cross the whitewash against London Welsh (3-37), Rotherham (3-12) andBristol(6-20), and they haven’t collected a single point on their travels since their penultimate play-off fixture a tPlymouth in April.

Many observers felt that Esher were hard done by when they were relegated from the old National One at the end of the 2008-09 season despite finishing 12^th of 16 clubs; with 61 points they were 27 points clear of 13^th-placed Sedgley Park yet 30 adrift of the Welsh in sixth. But the RFU’s plans for the had been steamrollered through, and they were replaced by Birmingham Solihull, who had collected 111 points from 30 games in finishing top of National Two. Twelve months later Esher returned, with 135 points from 29 games (a dead-rubber at Cinderford which had been postponed in the bleak mid-winter was not rearranged); Sam Ulph scored 399 points in 24 appearances, including 51 in the 148-0 demolition of Manchester on the opening day of the season. Seb Jewell was the division’s top try-scorer with 23 from 25 appearances, including six in the rematch at Manchester, while he also kicked 50 points, including eleven conversions from 14 attempts in a 92-0 win over Otley in March.

Sam was their top points scorer again last year with 163, ahead of another London Welsh Old Boy, Mike Whitehead, who is now plying his trade at Doncaster: between them they kicked 17 points in our 22-19 defeat at Moseley Road on that wet and windy Friday night back in October 2010, while Sam scored 12 of their 17 points in the return at ODP last Christmas, including his only try of the league part of the season. Gerard Mullen, still yet to make a league appearance since his summer move to ODP, was joint-top try-scorer last term with six, while this season only two players – Canadian centre Phil Mackenzie with four and former Donny winger Andy Wright (two) – have dotted down more than once. On paper this game looks like a straight-forward home win – Esher have never won at ODP in six previous visits – but we’ve twice been turned over at Moseley Road when expected to comfortably beat our hosts and they’ll be keen to avenge that 37-3 defeat on a much more balmy Friday evening three months back.

And so to New Year’s Eve, and the visit of Moseley. Having won just twice in the opening twelve rounds - at home to Esher and Bristol– they’ve recorded back-to-back wins in the league (excluding play-offs) for the first time in 23 months, beating Doncaster 17-15 and grabbing a try-bonus at Esher (29-14) last time out. Those results took them up to 9^th, leap-frogging Plymouth and London Scottish, and they entertain our fellow Exiles on Boxing Day. That win over Bristol marks them down as a dangerous team, regardless of the fact that we racked-up our biggest score of the season so far in winning 41-16 at Billesley Common in October, a result which put us on top of the Championship for the first time. For some reason, however, our attack has dried-up since then, with just two try-bonus points scored in the last eight rounds - at Bristol and Plymouth - compared with four from the opening six. And while we’ve won the last eight meetings in the league, Moseley’s last win at ODP came just twelve months ago when they overcame a 21-5 half-time deficit with three second-half tries to claim a 24-21 win (with bonus point) in the B&I Cup.

Having already beaten two of the top eight, and with both London Scottish and Plymouth to visit Billesley in the next month, Moseley are suddenly looking up at the promotion play-offs. The top eight seemed to be cut-and-dried a few weeks back, but their win over Doncaster allied to the fact that the top sides are all taking points from one another week after week has seen the gap between eighth and ninth remain at 14 points. To put that another way, Doncaster are as close to the leaders, Bristol, as they are to the team behind them, Moseley, but whereas the gap to the leaders is increasing with each round the relegation-threatened clubs are refusing to be shaken off. Admittedly time is running out - eight rounds to go over the next two months - but whoever loses the Yorkshire derby at Castle Park on Boxing Day will be looking nervously at results below them.

Elsewhere in the Championship this Christmas, leaders Bristol entertain second-placed Bedford at 6.15pm on Friday 23^rd (Sky have a lot to answer for…) while over the New Year holiday Bristol travel to fourth-placed Nottingham and fifth-placed Pirates will be following a star to Goldington Road. With home games against teams currently marooned in the relegation play-offs, teams from whom we collected the maximum ten points in the away fixtures in early-autumn, Welsh should be looking to establish ourselves as one of the leading teams in the Championship moving into 2012. No team has really grabbed the division by the scruff of the neck this season, but for those with serious aspirations - of whom we profess to be one – it’s time to stand up and be counted. Merry Christmas everyone!

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London Welsh Bumper Christmas & New Year Match Preview!

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

Date: 22/12/2011 12:29

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