Prof’s Positives Week 9: Bristol – or not

By The Prof
October 31 2002

Well, that was a bit of an interesting week, no first team game because of wind! Was supporter safety the real reason, was the ground dangerous, were Bristol happy to call the game off because of their injury crisis, were they taking pity on us because of ours, will this sentence ever end?

Can any positives be found in this non-game? I think so, we didn’t lose away from home in the ZP, we didn’t pick up any injuries (although there was a worrying rumour at one point that Duncombe had blown away when he got off the bus and was last seen flying over Swindon – thankfully this proved to be untrue), the management proved that they are willing to improvise by putting Will Greenwood in the number 10 jersey and the supporters who were travelling on Will’s coach had a wonderful time even though we didn’t get to the game. Blimey that sentence was longer than the last one!

Will has already written a report on the coach trip but I would just like to say I hope that everyone who went on it enjoyed the experience as much as I did. Some have suggested that a game being cancelled would be catastrophic but we certainly made the most of it. One major positive was that the London Irish v Northampton game was pretty terrible and if we came up against those teams playing that badly we shouldn’t have any trouble beating them.

On the injury front everyone is a week closer to returning than they were in the last edition of Prof’s Positives and Burke, Bell and Woody are set to return in the near future and Luger looks like he might be returning before Christmas (yes, OK, I nicked this information from Scotty Speaks, but I am not as bad as Chris O Jones – Hi Chris!).

Elsewhere in the club the 2nd XV defeated a strong Oxford University team with a very late try. It might be disappointing that with the amount of possession and territory we had that the game wasn’t finished off much earlier and in much more style but at least the team didn’t give up and won in the end. The 2ndXV is also full of U21 players so this bodes well for the future of the club.

The U21 team pulled off a wonderful result against Bristol U21s winning 16-10, this may not sound like a fantastic result but Bristol have won the U21s league for the last couple of years. The excellent play of the U21s has lead to a number of Harlequins players being called up into the national squad. The England U21 south team to play France U21 west contains T Allen, I Martin, U Monye and S Walton – congratulations to them all.

The Ladies team did not lose this week, and the draw they got was not a losing one like the draw against Reading where they lost a 19 point lead.

The Amateurs had a 31 point victory over Northolt and retain their third place in the league.

Finally the last positive that I can think of this week is that Mr Vos has arrived and he will be starting against Bath on Saturday (in a team that will see Will Greenwood play at 10). Apparently he has fitted in well with the team straight away and has shown his commitment to the club with vigorous training on the day he arrived. A source close to the Management was reported to have said – he is better than Clark Kent!