Gloucester v London Welsh Preview

After the excitement of the last two rounds of the Six Nations we return to our domestic struggles once again this weekend.  Off-field events have seen Welsh drop to the foot of the table during the two-week break, although with an appeal scheduled to be heard later this week, who knows what the position will be as we try to ensure our Premiership survival where it really matters - on the pitch.

London Welsh fans won’t need reminding that their team have now lost seven consecutive Premiership matches in a sequence stretching back to the beginning of December, when we beat London Irish at Oxford.  That equals the worst run in the top flight this season, set by Sale between the opening round and the first weekend of November, when they also recorded a home win over London Irish.  So this is probably not a good time to mention that our fellow Exiles have only recorded one win away from home this season, and that was at Kingsholm in round thirteen.   That was Gloucester’s second home defeat of the current campaign, following a 19-24 defeat to Northampton on the opening weekend, and with a further five defeats and a draw from their nine away games they sit fifth in the table after seventeen rounds, three points adrift of the Saints and ahead of Wasps on points difference.  However, Gloucester are the only Premiership club to have collected at least a point from each of their games this season, with all seven defeats being by a margin of seven points or fewer.  The Cherry & Whites were in a similarly strong position at the same stage of last season, but somehow contrived to lose their last six games, including home defeats to Exeter and Newcastle and a 52-18 drubbing at the Madejski on the final weekend, thereby slipping to ninth place - their worst finish since 1998-98 - and missing out on a Heineken Cup spot.  They won all six pool games in the Amlin this season, including home-and-away victories over the Irish, and will entertain holders Biarritz in the quarter-finals on Thursday 4^th April.

Welsh compete for lineout ball
against Saracens 

Earlier this week Gloucester winger Jonny May collected his award for Premiership Player of the Month for February.  He returned to the 1^st XV after a four month injury-enforced absence with two Challenge Cup appearances in January, and has since scored four tries in as many Premiership appearances.  He was also instrumental in the decisive score as Worcester were beaten 29-23 at Kingsholm four weeks ago, as it was a trip by former London Welsh Errie Claassens on the flying winger that brought about a last-minute penalty try.  May is one of a number of young English backs in the squad whom many observers feel should be playing for England in the not-too-distant future.  Billy Twelvetrees won his first cap in the opening round of this year’s Six Nations, scoring a debut try against Scotland and making three further appearances, while Freddie Burns was an unused replacement upon his return from injury against Italy after making his debut in the win over New Zealand in the autumn.  With No.8 Ben Morgan also missing due to an injury picked-up in the Calcutta Cup match, Gloucester’s stand-out performer in the tournament was their club captain, Scotland lock Jim Hamilton.  Voted Man of the Match against Ireland for a typically cussed performance which showcased his true strengths - being a niggling pain in the backside to anybody in the opposition jersey - he’s being talked about as a possible British Lion this summer.  He’s already announced that he will be moving on to pastures new at the end of the season, with Montpelier strongly rumoured to be his destination, and the club have moved to replace his this week with the signing of James Hudson from Newcastle.

There is an argument - and fans of Harlequins or Saracens may disagree - for saying that Gloucester have the finest back division this side of the Severn Bridge, with the likes of May, Twelvetrees and Burns being joined by Charlie Sharples, Henry Trinder, Shane Monahan and the old warhorse, James Simpson-Daniel.  Sharples started the 2008-09 season on-loan at Moseley, scoring seven tries in the opening seven rounds, despite only turning 19 a fortnight before the start of the league campaign; he went on to win his first cap as a replacement in a World Cup warm-up game with Wales at Twickenham in 2011, making his first start in Paris in last year’s Six Nations and scoring two tries against Fiji in the first of this season’s autumn internationals.  It must be galling for almost every English winger in the Premiership to see the national side score one try in their last four matches yet persist in selecting one winger who is so hopelessly out of form and lacking in confidence and another who is a full-back playing out of position. Twelvetrees, Monahan, Tongan flanker Sione Kalamafoni and ex-Pirates pair Drew Locke and Rob Cook will all be familiar to London Welsh players and supporters - all have tormented us in the Championship in recent years, with Cook in particular being arguably the best player on the pitch over the two legs of the play-of final.  His kicking routine may look like a bizarre internet dance craze, but it’s extremely effective, with 48 points gathered in the last four games since he took over as frontline goalkicker in Burns’ absence.
 

Charlie Sharples - 19 apopearances this season
and 230 since his 2007/08 debut

Burns is the Premiership’s fourth-highest scorer this season with 187, behind Nick Evans (201), Charlie Hodgson (195) and Andy Goode (192) although nobody can better his 49 penalties.  Gloucester have scored 30 tries (the Premiership’s best is 40 by Leicester; the worst 19 by London Welsh) and conceded 29 (Saracens 17; London Welsh 48), but in the final 20 minutes of games they have scored 12 and conceded just three.  Their joint-top try scorers are Akapusi Qera - another player plucked from the lower leagues following a successful spell with Birmingham Solihull (then known as Pertemps Bees) in 2006-07 - and Jonny May with four apiece - the same as Phil Mackenzie.

February's AP Player of the Month
Jonny May in action against Wasps 

As London Welsh look to bring an end to our longest losing streak in the league since we lost nine in a row from 14^th October to 9^th December 2006, so Lyn Jones has one final crack at getting one over on his fellow Welshmen in the Premiership’s dugouts.  Dai Young’s Wasps are the only club who have taken the maximum ten points from our home-and-away fixtures while simultaneously denying us so much as a losing bonus point, while Nigel Davies’ Cherry & Whites saw an 18-9 half-time lead become a 25-21 deficit just after the hour mark at the Kassam at the end of September, before replacement prop Shaun Knight’s first ever league try - in a career which has taken in the Championship with Moseley, National One with Cinderford and the Magners League with Edinburgh, as well as two U20 Six Nations campaigns - saw them scrape home 31-25.  We also suffered a 46-20 reverse at Kingsholm in the LV Cup in November, although the two teams showed significant changes compared to the line-ups in the league encounter seven weeks previously.  Our lack of depth relative to the more established Premiership clubs was emphasised by the appearance of London Scottish loanee Jamie Stephenson as scrum-half, while his opposite number was Jimmy Cowan, a World Cup winner with 51 caps for New Zealand.

Bizarrely, both Welsh and Sale play (in alphabetical order) Bath, Gloucester, London Irish and Northampton in the next four rounds of matches.  The Irish are looking like they should be safe from the drop this season, and a home win in the (delayed) St Patrick’s Day fixture on Sunday over Worcester - the only side who haven’t won away from home in the Premiership this term - should bring mathematical certainty a step closer.  Bath have won only once on their travels - at Sixways on the opening weekend - and while we certainly benefitted from their travel sickness in November we need them to do us a massive favour on Friday night.  A lot of the neutrals still want to see London Welsh survive the drop - the general feeling is that a new team, new venue and new supporters bring some welcome colour to the competition - but recent events in the courtrooms have seen some of that goodwill evaporate.  We won many plaudits in defeat at Saracens last time out, and you have to hope that the off-field shenanigans have given the players extra impetus to prove the naysayers wrong, just as they did in last year’s play-offs and the opening months of the current campaign.  Winning friends isn’t going to be enough - we need to start winning matches.