Cornish Pirates v London Welsh - Championship Final 1st Leg

By Mark W-J
May 18 2012

After thirty matches over the course of nearly nine months, the entire 2011-12 season boils down to the next 160 minutes. Having battled their way through eighteen wins, three draws and nine defeats London Welsh now face the one team we haven’t beaten this season - Cornish Pirates – in the two-legged final to determine which of us will achieve the Holy Grail of promotion to the Aviva Premiership.

That’s the theory, anyway. As all followers of the Championship are aware, the Minimum Standards Criteria (MSC) stipulated by the Professional Game Board (PGB) – which comprises representatives of Premier Rugby Limited (PRL), the Rugby Players’ Association (RPA) and the Rugby Football Union (RFU), as well as the Championship’s Geoff Irvine – have to be audited and approved before a recommendation can be passed to Twickenham to rubber-stamp promotion. At the time of writing it is still not known whether London Welsh have passed the audit, which consists of so much more than finding an alternative venue with sufficient urinals. For most clubs, that’s the easy bit: eleven of the current Championship clubs have - within an hour of their current homes - a ground which would fulfil the vast majority of the criteria. The exception, of course, is the Pirates, whose nearest available football ground would be Plymouth Argyle’s Home Park, nearly 80 miles and two hours away via the A38 and A30. They had hoped to play there for the first few months of next season in the event of winning the play-offs, but delays to the approval of the proposed Stadium for Cornwall (S4C) meant that they would have had to stay across the Tamar for an entire season, which – you guessed it – would fall foul of the Minimum Standards Criteria.

Unfortunately for the Pirates, the County Council last week voted – by a majority of just 56 to 45 – to reject a proposal for £10m of central funding for the S4C, as a result of which the proposed stadium is almost certain to remain on the drawing board. Yet this decision has probably earned more column inches in the mainstream press than all of the rugby which has been played in the Championship this season. Furthermore, the furore over promotion – and, more specifically, relegation – has brought the second tier of English rugby into the spotlight, to the extent that all of the Premiership clubs’ message boards on Sport Network have carried threads in recent weeks about the four semi-finalists and the probabilities of the two finalists to a) winning promotion and b) surviving should they be accepted by the cartel. For all we complain about the farcical situation of being forced to tick all of the boxes in a 60 page document when the clubs who insist on the right to judge us themselves fail to comply with the significant chunks of the criteria, it is this inequity which has given the Championship clubs the publicity which we have craved all season long.

We will fight them on the beaches......
Chairman Bleddyn Phillips is ready for a battle to get London Welsh into the Premiership

But before we can debate the rights and wrongs of the audit, we need to earn promotion by the only criterion that really matters - winning the play-offs. They may not be everyone’s cup of tea, and the changes to next year’s structure, whereby the top four progress automatically to the knockout stages, have addressed one of the biggest gripes, but they’ve certainly provided some excitement over the last three years. That the final is being contested by the teams who finished third and fourth in the regular season maybe reflects the two clubs’ ability to peak at the right time, while asking questions of Bristol’s preparations for a second time in three years. Pirates, of course, made it through to the final last year, where they lost 46-32 on aggregate to Worcester after ending our interest in the competition at the semi-final stage. In driving rain at the Mennaye, Welsh led 10-3 at half-time courtesy of Matt Corker’s fourth try for the club in his 101^st league appearance, and five points from Gordon Ross. But the Pirates, particularly at home, are never down for long. Fifteen unanswered second-half points saw them comfortably overturn that deficit, with former London Welsh Youth player Rhodri McAtee scoring the decisive try with fewer than five minutes remaining. But that was nothing compared to the heroics of this year’s semi-final. Trailing 14-0 at home toBristol after just ten minutes, and reaching half-time 17-9 adrift, they produced arguably the most stunning 40 minute display seen at any level this season. Five tries, four conversions and a penalty produced an incredible 45-24 victory, and a 21 point margin which Bristol, despite their unbeaten record at the Mem this season, never looked like overturning in the second leg.

Matt Corker takes the direct route

Welsh reached the final for the first time off the back of a controlled performance on a wet Friday night at Bedford and a heroic 50 minute defensive effort in the Richmond sun nine days later. In the first half at ODP we played a masterful tactical game, keeping the Blues pinned back deep in their own half, and cutting them off at source whenever they secured any decent possession. At 9-0 up, with a 19 point lead on aggregate, we looked comfortably in control, but a converted try late in the first half gave the visitors a sniff of a chance. When Nick Scott crossed after 47 minutes, pursuing Gordon Ross’s speculative clearance kick following a period of sustained Bedford pressure, it looked like we were home and dry. But worryingly the Welsh were out on their feet after defending manfully for the opening two thirds of the game, and it was a concern to hear Lyn Jones’ comments that the players weren’t used to playing at such levels of intensity. Knowing Lyn, of course, it may well just be part of the mind games.

Alex Davies - scorer of 20 points in the semi-final matches

Our record inCornwall in recent years gives cause for concern ahead of such a big occasion. We’ve won only once in four visits in the Championship, 28-24 on the final day of the regular season in 2009-10, although that was our third consecutive win in the Duchy. In 19 games overall the Pirates have won 11, with seven Welsh victories and a single draw, 17-17 at ODP back in October. Our try scorer that afternoon was Rob Lewis, who has scored three of his six league tries against the Pirates, including his first (and second) in club colours in our 34-10 win in October 2009. Pirates have lost only once at home this season - 34-24 to Bedford in October - and the only time we’ve won down there by more than a converted try was by 31-18 on the final weekend of the old National One in April 2009. But we boast the best away record in the Championship this season, with eleven wins and a draw from fifteen matches, including a best-ever win at Goldington Road in the semi-final first leg. There may be further conflict to come in the committee rooms and possibly even the courtrooms, but if we can win at Penzance on Wednesday night we’ll have overcome arguably our biggest battle of the season so far.

Our thanks to Alex Hoenig for the LW v Bedford images

Cornish Pirates v London Welsh - Championship Final 1st Leg Preview

Posted by: The Dragon\'s Den (IP Logged)

Date: 21/05/2012 20:56

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012:05:21:20:56:58 by Dragons' Den.