Prof’s Positives Week 20: No Rugby!

By The Prof
January 16 2003

So after the huge amounts of positives to come out of the game against Bristol this week there was no rugby at Quins. None of the Quins teams played as far as I am aware.

So can there be any positives in a week without rugby, well we didn’t lose, our position in the league is no worse, we are still in all the cups we were in the week before and most players came through the training sessions without injury – whether they all did we shall have to wait and see. The squad got together down at Roehampton for three days of discussing things like – why can’t we win away in the league?

There was training in the snow, a new experience for our southern hemisphere stars – Ace Tiatia and Bill Satala, which then degenerated into a massive snowball fight and snowman building event. By the sound of it many a handful of snow was stuffed down the back of many a training shirt and much fun was had by all.

Could this be a watershed, might the squad and management have worked out a strategy to win games away from home? We shall see in Newcastle.

On the injury front there is yet more bad news for Pat Sanderson who is having an operation on his shoulder that might keep him out for the rest of the season which suggests that Andre Vos will continue at 7 with Ace & Dippy making up the rest of the back row. Or at least for the next month or so, since Roy Winters might be back in a month or so’s time, he will give another choice in the back row but since he is more of a 6/8 it looks like we will still be without a dedicated number 7 (not to say that Vos isn’t an incredibly good stand in).

One other player who is coming back soon is Bruce Starr who is a very good scrummager and who was close to being man of the match in the few games he played earlier in the season (at least in my opinion).

Two of our walking wounded have had a chance to recover and should be raring to go when we host Leicester in the cup for the third year running – Andre Vos and Tony Diprose, Vos has been playing through a shoulder injury and Dippy has been playing on one leg for the past few weeks.

There is an U21s game against Wasps (sorry London Wasps) on Saturday at The Stoop and on Sunday the Ladies are playing at home (at Twickenham Rugby Club, Hampton) against Weston Super Mare so there is no excuse for not getting your Quins fix this weekend, and then the week after is the big cup game against Leicester, get your tickets if you haven’t already got them, they are going fast.

Finally thanks must go to the Stade Francais fans who we met up with at their Parker Pen Challenge Cup game against Wasps last weekend, it was nice to see them again and we wish them all the best for the return match in Paris. A report of the trip up to Wycombe will follow soon.