Worcester Warriors v London Welsh Preview

By Mark W-J
December 20 2012

The Premiership season reaches the halfway stage this weekend with London Welsh renewing our long-standing rivalry with Worcester Warriors. Despite having won one game more than our hosts we currently sit one place and one point behind them in the league, but we travel in the knowledge that win, lose or draw, we will wake on Christmas morning to find ourselves no lower than tenth in the table.

As everyone now knows - courtesy of the Worcester Standard - the two clubs have met on eighteen occasions, with Welsh returning a solitary victory, in the very first encounter back on 25^th October 1997 in Jewson National League One. Our 28-13 victory, courtesy of tries from Andy Currier (two) and Martin Giraud, was, at the time, Worcester’s heaviest home defeat in league rugby, but to put that in perspective, they had enjoyed five promotions (plus one elevation due to restructure of the leagues) and one relegation in the eleven seasons since the Courage leagues had been introduced, starting out in Midlands Two West in 1987-88. And how we have paid for that one win, with seventeen consecutive defeats at the hands of the Warriors by an average margin of seventeen points. Yet the Welsh fans are cautiously optimistic about reversing that trend this week, while the home supporters are unsure of their team’s ability to cope with the tag of favourites. Eighth-placed Wasps entertain bottom club Sale on Sunday afternoon, with the Sharks hosting Worcester next Friday and Wasps visiting the Kassam on Saturday week, so all four clubs have a chance to make a real statement about their prospects for the remainder of the season. While Sale are praying for a win, Welsh, Worcester and Wasps all know that two wins from two would allow them the comfort of not looking so nervously over their shoulders, despite the fact that we’re all currently closer to the play-off places than the single relegation berth.

Former LW player Errie Claassens
has made just 5 starts for Wprcester this season

Since winning promotion to the Premiership at the end of the 2003-04 season, Worcester have never bettered the eighth place and 47 points that they earned in 2005-06, although they did achieve nine victories in each of their first two seasons in the top flight. They have lost only once at home this season, 24-23 to Bath on the opening day, courtesy of an 80^th minute penalty from Olly Barkley, and collected 16 of their 20 points in the comfortable surroundings of Sixways. Yet two of those home wins came against Sale and London Irish, although a 12-3 win in horrible conditions against an admittedly under-strength Saracens and a 16-16 draw, including tit-for-tat last minute penalties, against free-running Gloucester should not be taken lightly. But it is a measure of our confidence, with four wins and 19 points already in the bag, that the London Welsh supporters believe that this is another game that we should target in our quest for Premiership survival. If we want to look for a positive slant on the seventeen consecutive defeats, we could take comfort from the fact that at the start of this season there were ten teams who had a 100% record against Welsh in the first 25 years of league rugby (albeit over a combined total of 14 matches) but we have already beaten two of them - London Irish and Sale Sharks. For the record - and because you’re just dying to know - the ten teams were: Headingley, London Irish & Richmond, (Courage Two, 87-89); Sale (Courage Two, 88-89); Askeans, Nuneaton, Roundhay, & Vale of Lune (Courage Three, 89-90); Maidenhead (Courage Four South, 90-91); and Harlequins (home and away, National One, 05-06).

Try-scoring has often been their Achilles heel, with just nine try bonus points in total in their Premiership history, including two in as many weeks earlier this season. Yet their back division is so strong that neither Josh Drauniniu nor Errie Claassens, both of whom joined from the Welsh after Worcester spent the 2010-11 season in the Championship, can command a regular place in the matchday squad. They lost both of last season’s top try-scorers, Miles Benjamin and Marcel Garvey, during the summer - they were the Championship’s top try-scorers the previous year, with a combined total of 45 - but veteran Samoan winger David Lemi has crossed four times this term. Fly-half Andy Goode is the only other player to have crossed more than once, with his two tries contributing to his total of 125 points thus far. The Warriors have scored 16 tries this season - two more than the two Exiles clubs and Bath, five more than Sale, and seven more than Saracens, who average a pitiful one per game - but eight of them were scored in a seven day spell in October which included a 37-31 defeat at Northampton and a 35-11 demolition of London Irish at Sixways six days later. At Franklins Gardens they trailed 37-3 with an hour played before belatedly coming to life, and also crossed three times in the final quarter against Irish: consequently no club has scored more tries in the final quarter of their games, with Worcester crossing twelve times in the last 20 minutes of matches.

The metronomic Andy Goode has clocked up over
700 points in just two and a half seasons at Worcester

There is likely to be at least one name in the London Welsh line-up that is familiar to Worcester fans, with full-back Tom Arscott having joined us from the Warriors in the summer. Tom has started in nine of our tens games so far, scoring our first ever Premiership try against Leicester, after spending most of last year in Worcester’s squad for the European Challenge and LV Cups. Meanwhile Nick Runciman, who made just seven Premiership appearances (four starts) in three seasons at Sixways, has struggled to make any impact in his second spell at Welsh. Despite playing ten times for Gloucester in the top flight last season he has been named on the bench for seven of our ten games thus far, spending only 67 minutes on the pitch in September and being relegated to the second-string for the two cup competitions for the last couple of months. Adam Balding has started in our last two Premiership games - like Tom Arscott, he joined the Warriors when they were relegated to the Championship, making eleven appearances (four starts) before returning to Newcastle midway through last season.

Rob Lewis is on loan from Blues
Could this Friday see his return to LW colours?

With 19 points from our ten games to date we are on-target to hit the magical (should that be mythical?) 40 point mark which supposedly all-but guarantees Premiership survival. As mentioned previously, we are as close to second-placed Saracens as we are to Sale, which means that Worcester are actually closer to top spot than bottom. But their relegation three years ago has taught them not to take anything for granted, and they still refuse to look up the table for fear of losing sight of what is happening at the bottom. For six seasons they represented the benchmark for second-tier clubs, an example of what could be achieved with long-term planning, a purpose-built stadium, a bucketload of ambition, and - in the short-term, at least - a benefactor with deep pockets. But their relegation coincided with Exeter’s promotion, and (whisper it quietly) the Chiefs have achieved significantly more in two years than the Warriors managed in six. Yet you get the sense that, this time around, Worcester are happy to let other teams take the spotlight. When they first won promotion Cecil Duckworth confidently predicted domestic and European titles within five years: now they’re more modestly targeting a first away win of the season at Sale and a dream of mid-table obscurity, before they look at longer-term goals.

Worcester Warriors v London Welsh Preview

Posted by: The Dragons' Den (IP Logged)

Date: 20/12/2012 10:12

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