Wuss preview

By Kingston Park
March 15 2007

The Warriors have at last woken up to make a determined effort to hang on to their Guinness Premiership place, and have the Falcons in their sights tomorrow. Many thanks to local guru Kingston Park who makes his glorious debut as a writer for this site.

At Christmas 2005, in their second full season, they were riding high in 4th place and seemingly on course for a Heineken Cup place with tough efficient performances built around one of the GP’s more effective packs of forwards. All that they lacked was the cutting edge of fast skilful backs to exploit their work. Enter Anthony Eddy as backs coach. Starting with the Bath game on Boxing Day the wheels came off one by one and in 2006 only four games out of 23 were won, including a thrilling 35-27 victory against the Falcons at the end of the season, which gave the Warriors false hopes for the new season ahead with a new style of fast open attacking rugby, though it must be said that the Falcons defence did not wake up until the damage was done.

This season began with a heavy loss at home to Bristol, the start of Bristol’s surprising charge to the top of the GP, then an agonising last minute loss to the Falcons in the first of Kingston Park’s Friday night games, thanks in part to Tim Visser’s debut try at the death, and in part, it must be said, to the Warriors’ lack of discipline up front as two forwards were in the sin-bin at the time. How significant that try will be at the season’s end we shall soon see.

Throughout the autumn Worcester continued to lose, though picking up bonus-points to keep reasonably in touch with the teams above, often losing the game in the last ten minutes. The decision was taken to dispense with Eddy’s services and install Phil Larder as defensive consultant. The turnaround has been marked. Consecutive away wins against Saracens and fellow-strugglers Northampton kick-started the season. Scoring against the Warriors became more difficult and this has bred confidence. Since Christmas the home-form has improved, with a 3-3 draw against Wasps, a game that should have been won, and wins over Bath and, last week, an ailing Sale. There were regrets that in both games they allowed their opponents back to sneak a losing bonus-point, which would have kept these two teams deeper in the relegation-mix. Three weeks ago the target for survival was six straight wins; two have now been achieved, and confidence at Sixways is high about their chances on Friday.

This weekend sees the last of the Six Nations. Worcester have few calls on their staff, and only Chris Horsman, who is in the Welsh team at the Millennium Stadium, will be missing on that front. However, Worcester will also be without their captain, Pat Sanderson, lately captain of England, who broke a hand in the Bath game. The Falcons, of course, will be missing Toby Flood, Jamie Noon and Mat Tait, as well as Jonny Wilkinson recovering from injury. Thus it is likely that a back division that has had little game-time together will be facing a Worcester line containing Shane Drahm, recently on the verge of England selection as stand-off half, and the vastly improved Dale Rasmussen. The Worcester pack is still a very useful unit with Craig Gillies, one of the most effective line-out specialists not to have been picked by England, and Kai Horstmann, who had a successful Saxons tour last summer. The forward-battle is likely to be pivotal and a measure of how much the Falcons have improved since Joe McDonnell, Mark Sorenson and Russell Winter have arrived.

Friday’s match is unlikely to be the try-fest of last season’s game at Sixways. A win for the Falcons will almost erase their relegation worries and pile more pressure on Worcester, whereas a win for the Warriors would give them the confidence that they can prolong their GP stay for another season at least, and pressure would increase on the Falcons to return something from their last three games all at home.

James Hoyle starts in the centre for the first time in several months with Jamie Noon joining Toby Flood and Mathew Tait in the England squad. FORMER Australian international Matthew Burke returns at full back as captain:

15 Matthew Burke (captain)
14 Tom May
13 James Hoyle
12 Mark Mayerhofler
11 John Rudd
10 Loki Crichton
9 Lee Dickson

1 Joe McDonnell
2 Matt Thompson
3 Micky Ward
4 Mark Sorenson
5 Jason Oakes
6 Geoff Parling
7 Ben Woods
8 Brent Wilson

Replacements:

Jon Golding
Andy Long
Andy Buist
Mike McCarthy
Joe Shaw
James Grindal
Tom Dillon