London Welsh Round-Up & Grenoble Preview

By Mark W-J
December 5 2012

The stop-start nature of London Welsh’s season has become a recurring theme in recent weeks, and after a short, two-week burst of Premiership action, we return to European competition, for back-to-back fixtures with Grenoble. The French club, like Welsh, are enjoying a first season in the top flight following promotion last summer, and they sit in sixth place in the Top 14 after twelve rounds.

Our own start to life in the Aviva Premiership has been rather more modest, although still significantly more successful than any of us had dared dream. After ten rounds we sit in 10^th place, with four wins and three losing bonus points contributing to a total of 19 points. This puts us 13 points clear of bottom-placed Sale, a significant buffer at this stage of the season, but by no means insurmountable should the Sharks or, indeed, London Irish, hit a rich vein of form in the second half of the season. But what has been overlooked by many people, as they look nervously down the table rather than up, is that we are also 13 points adrift of second-placed Saracens. Each place in the top-half of the table is currently separated by a single point, from leaders Harlequins on 33 points to sixth-placed Exeter on 28, while we are seven points clear of our fellow Exiles but only one behind Worcester and five adrift of Wasps, coincidentally our next two opponents in the league. Wasps have also collected four wins, but lead us due to their five additional bonus points - only Quins can match their three try-bonuses - while Worcester have won one game fewer but drawn one and collected a total of six bonus points. As a consequence they are within our reach, and while they may not be worried about the relegation battle this year, we may still see them as direct rivals in our ‘mini-league’ at the bottom end of the table.

Wasps will entertain Sale in round eleven, meaning that they will have to travel to all four clubs below them in the table during the second half of the season. At home they have won four from five, including victory over an under-strength Leicester side in round nine, but they have yet to pick up a victory on their travels. This could be because they have only played away to top-half opposition, in which case they might aspire to mid-table obscurity in the New Year as they hope to beat the top sides at Wycombe while claiming the highly-valued away wins against the ‘lesser’ teams. London Irish, on the other hand, have played all of the other teams in the bottom five away from home, with Sale, Wasps, Worcester and Welsh all travelling to Reading in the last seven rounds, when they will be aiming to bridge a gap which they will hope is not already too great. We are the only one of the bottom five clubs to have won on our travels - at Sale in September - and you sense that, while home wins are all-important, the relegation battle could be decided by points earned away from home. If we could win our three post-Christmas games at home to our nearest rivals (Wasps on 29^th December; Sale on 17^th February; Worcester on the final day) then you fancy that the Sharks would need to win six of their remaining twelve fixtures (bonus points notwithstanding) to overtake us. Since the Premiership became a twelve-team competition in 1999-2000 only one club - Bristol in 2002-03 - has been relegated with seven victories to their name, although Harlequins collected six wins, one draw and twelve bonus points when they were relegated with a record high of 38 points two years later.

Gordon Ross' experience is proving crucial
in the battle to stay in the Premiership

Stop-start nature of the Premiership; check. Win your ‘mini-league’; check. Home wins are vital and away wins decisive; check. Three top-flight clichés courtesy of Dragons’ Den. So let’s introduce a fourth: the distraction of the cup. While it was wonderful to welcome a club like Stade Francais to the Kassam for our first ever game in European competition, the result - the biggest home defeat in the club’s history - suggested that the Amlin European Challenge Cup - and the LV Anglo-Welsh Cup, for that matter - are not particularly high on Lyn Jones’ list of priorities this season. Grenoble, despite being back in the top flight of French rugby after an eight year absence, have won seven and lost five of their twelve matches to sit in sixth place. Although they lost 39-3 at leader Toulon last weekend, they are ahead of some of the biggest names in not just French but European rugby, including Biarritz (7^th), Perpignan (8^th), and the Parisian giants Racing Metro and Stade Franҫais (9^th and 10^th respectively). Remarkably, they have scored 21 tries and 21 conversions, but only the league’s bottom two clubs - Agen (13th) and Mont-de-Marsan (14th) - have conceded more than their 25 tries, with 27 and 30 respectively.

It's a squad game...
The cup gives Lyn Jones a chance to
tap into the versatility of players such as James Lewis

Grenoble were finalists in the Top 16 (as it was then) as recently as 1993: at a time when we were making the acquaintance of North Walsham, Weston-Super-Mare and Sudbury, they were playing for the highest honour in French rugby in front of a crowd of almost 50,000 at the Parc des Princes, although they lost 14-11 to Castres Olympique. Eight years later they lost a relegation play-off against Pau, but twelve month on, under the guidance of Jacques Delmas - who subsequently led Biarritz to back-to-back league titles and the Heineken Cup final - they won promotion from the Pro D2 as runners-up to Mont-de-Marsan. Delmas was replaced for the 2004-05 season by Dean Richards, as he returned to the game following his acrimonious departure from Leicester, but he only stayed for one season before returning to England, joining Harlequins after their relegation from the Premiership. At the end of the 2005-06 season the Top 16 was reduced to fourteen clubs, and Grenoble were relegated two divisions as an audit revealed debts of over €3.5m - can you imagine what would happen if Premier Rugby were so conscientious…? They won promotion from Fédérale 1, the equivalent of National League One, at the first time of asking, and last season finished top of Pro D2, 18 points clear of second-placed Pau, who lost the play-off final for the second promotion place to - you guessed it - Mont-de-Marsan.

In this year’s Amlin Challenge Cup, Grenoble opened with a 59-3 win at home to Cavalieri Prato before collecting a bonus point in a 24-21 defeat away to Stade Franҫais. As a consequence they are currently in second place in Pool 5, three points behind their Parisian rivals, but with a marginally better points difference. Stade will be expected to pick-up the maximum ten points from their double-header with the Italian minnows, who had themselves suffered twelve consecutive bonus-point defeats in Europe prior to collecting two bonus points when we visited them in round two. If Grenoble were able to extend their current league form to the end of the season then they could qualify for next season’s Heineken Cup on their own merit; Stade’s domestic woes suggest that this is their only realistic route into the blue riband event for next season. For Welsh, it’s back to the clichés - Premiership survival is all that matters.

"Oh, the weather outside is frightful"
Friday's forecast for Grenoble - wrap up warm!

London Welsh Round-Up & Grenoble Preview

Posted by: The Dragons' Den (IP Logged)

Date: 06/12/2012 10:11

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