Play-offs and beyond
By Dragons' Den
April 28 2014
So the regular season closed with an emphatic win over Nottingham at Old Deer Park. But that counts for very little and it's all down to concentrating on the play-offs. There are four teams in the hunt and a slip up by any could cost dear
Even before the season had begun, Justin Burnell made it clear that his intention was to finish in the top four and to then take it from there.
Well that was achieved with games to spare and the last few of weeks have seen London Welsh and the other qualifiers fighting it out for league position.
Interestingly enough two weekends ago saw the top four all involved playing each other, with Leeds lined up against Rotherham and London Welsh meeting Bristol at the Memorial Stadium. That was a game with mixed fortunes for Welsh, which showed that should we meet again Bristol are a strong side who will no doubt put us under some considerable pressure, but also that they do have weaknesses and can be suseptable to leaking considerable points, particularly in the latter stages of games.
But before that there is the not so inconsiderable task of taking Leeds on over two legs and that we would fail to keep our eye on that ball at our peril. Leeds have proven themselves many times this season to be a strong side and despite us winning convincingly at the Kassam, they put us under a lot of pressure at Headingly and it could be said that it took one of our best second half performances to overcome them.
So the question remains, how will we do, do we have the game to overcome Leeds, well previous results would suggest we do. Do we have the nerve, are we suffering too many injuries and how fresh are the players we have available ?
Which team has the best chance of competing in the Premiership , but first which team has the game to get there?
Find out by following London Welsh through the play-offs, The Supporters Club are running buses to all the play-off games and details can be found by contacting either london@londonwelsh-supporters.co.uk or oxford@londonwelsh-supporters.co.uk depending where you want to travel from.
There is also further information on a thread elsewhere on Dragons Den
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All teams are strong on attack but LW have the edge as far as defence and experience are concerned
But having said that Bristol have some serious signings , and have come on strong recently, but I feel they would need a change of tactics to succede next season
Quote:elegia
needs more usage of the word considerable
as in..."he had nothing worth saying, so he had a snipe, because he was a considerable idiot"
Quote:chappers
Indeed and as far as the prem I feel we ould currently be best equipped to compete.
Wouldn't the most suitable and best equipped team be the one who performed the best and most consistently throughout the season?
When you got promoted, you finished fourth and were the first team to come straight back down since the new format was introduced. All the others finished top, Exeter second (just) and went on to survive their first season in the Prem. Seems to support the traditional method of side who finishes top gets promoted.
Then again, you are chippers so it's not unexpected.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014:05:01:14:38:40 by Rinkadink.
Quote:Rinkadink
Wouldn't the most suitable and best equipped team be the one who performed the best and most consistently throughout the season?
Not necessarily and if you don't realise that the Championship and the Premiership are two different beasts then so be it. Whilst your guys play a very open expansive and exciting game thats not necessarily whats going to carry you through in the Premiership.
Whoever gets promoted this season is going to find themselves under pressure for a large majority of the season and it's just my opinion that LW are presently best equiped to cope with that, based on the style of rugby we play.
As for your stats surrounding the top team getting promoted, since the new format, the top team has been promoted 2 out of 4 so only 50%, co-incidently the twice the top team have failed to get promoted have been the same team
The thing that few people seem willing to take on board is that there is a direct relationship between tries scored and league position in the AP. That is, if you score more tries then you are higher up the table. And tries scored outweigh tries conceded in terms of impact. I did once work out a fairly accurate formula that predicted the top four and bottom two clubs over a seven year period. It wasn't too good on the middle clubs (by which I mean useless). Which means that the strategy some clubs have adopted of attempting to minimise the tries they concede and hope to get a win or two by kicking penalties and picking up losing bonus points simply doesn't work. And this is why the argument that relegation fosters negative play is fundamentally flawed, negative play in fact means that a club is very unlikely ever to rise above mid table and if they don't score tries will almost certainly be threatened with relegation. I think Worcester are a particularly good example of this.
So, a team based on a strong defence at the expense of try scoring is unlikely to succeed in the AP. Now who out of Bristol with 111 tries (including five from Mr P. Try) and LW with 84 does this model appear to fit most closely? Not for a moment am I suggesting that AP defences are anything like as vulnerable as those at a lower level, of course.