To Hell in a Hand Cart?

Northampton Saints v NEC Harlequins

Guinness Premiership Saturday 17 February  2007

Result: Northampton Saints 15, NEC Harlequins 28

After an early spring break from competitive rugby, normal service resumed at Franklins Gardens as the Saints struggle to escape the relegation zone of the Guinness Premiership continued.

Under a grey, overcast sky, a near capacity crowd turned up to see if Saints could use a virtually full strength side to overcome the visitors from S W London. Sadly, the all too familiar result gave the home support no cause for optimism, especially as closest rivals in the relegation battle, Worcester, picked up a losing bonus point against Leicester to move them to within three points of Saints.

Despite the morale boosting return of club captain Bruce Reihana after an injury lay off of 5 months and an awful lot of hard work around the paddock by the team, Saints inability to finish off moves on the points scoring side of the try line continued. Saints scored 2 tries but they should and could have had more. The first, on 30 minutes came from a well worked 5 metre line out catch by rookie Alex Rae and drive over the line for Paul Tupai, playing No8 yesterday, to claim the 5 points. Carlos Spencer missed the relatively easy conversion. The second came immediately after the second half kick off and was a beauty worthy of the scrapbooks.

Quins kicked off and Ben Cohen caught the ball on his own 22 metre line. Sidestepping a couple of first up Quins chasers, he then accelerated through a gap in the midfield and powered his way towards the try line. Quins winger Ugo Monye showed tremendous pace to catch him but Ben obligingly gave him a piggy back for the last 10 metres and over the line for 5 points under the posts, quickly converted to 7 by Reihana.

Unfortunately, Ben then blotted his copy book minutes later with a soft tackle on his opposite number Dave Strettle who burst past the Saints winger for a try of his own.

And that was it from the home side, save for a penalty in the final quarter from Bruce.

Whilst on the subject of penalties or more particularly, infringements, two points stand out.

Firstly, how many times does Quins captain and arch cheat Paul Volley have to kill the ball or lie on the Saints side of a ruck to be yellow carded? Answer: no idea when Dave Pearson is refereeing. And no idea is what the official sadly displayed yesterday, especially in a first half when he failed to see a glaringly obvious off-side by Quins, who scored a try on 4 minutes when Gomersall charged down a Carlos clearance kick to follow up and score.

It only took 7 minutes of play in the first half before Paul Grayson was on the touchline complaining to fourth official Sean Davey that the man in the middle had clearly lost the plot.

The second concerns sin binnings. Three yellow cards were shown, the first two due to the players’ frustration at Pearson’s unwillingness to properly punish Volley for being where he shouldn’t. The Quins No 7 popped out on the wrong side of a Saints ruck yet again and Christian Short decided to pin him down and have a word about his past, present and future conduct. Both players were sent to the bin for fighting and Shorty was as red faced as his hair in anger at the decision. Sean Davey spent 5 minutes trying to convince Shorty that his colleague’s decision was correct but the flame haired lock remained unconvinced.

The third yellow card was shown in the second half to Darren Fox for coming in from the side at the tackle and playing the ball illegally but there seemed to have been no previous warning given and many spectators remained convinced that the wrong No7 had been binned.

However, to criticise the referee for Saints misfortunes would be wrong. They were the masters of their own downfall. Despite the amount of hard work put in by all 15, the same errors we have seen for weeks continue.

Dylan Hartley botched overlaps a couple of times going to ground in the tackle when an offload could have led to a try.

Carlos tried to get some backs moves going but runners’ inability to draw in the tacklers from a well organised Quins defence meant that the wingers were closed down well short or the lack of support meant that ball carriers had no options to keep the moves going.

The line out worked well despite the referee failing to monitor the 1 metre gap but ball off the top was often hurried and not useful. One Saints line out in their own 22 was farcical when the catchers were just not ready and Quins stole the ball with ease. All niggling little mistakes but they add up to a loss of control in the possession of the ball and the initiative being handed back to the opposition.

Dave Quinlan had a mare of a second half, quite out of character and Grayson admitted as much in his post match interview. Why then Paul, did you wait until 76 minutes of playing time had elapsed before bringing on Steve Myler to replace him. In the very next move, Saints attacked in the Quins 22 but Soane Tongahuia, on as an early replacement for Pat Barnard who left after only 10 minutes with a leg injury, knocked on. The ball was back with Quins, who charged upfield and a matter of seconds later Soialao was over in the right hand corner for a try with 4 minutes left. Saints had now even lost a losing bonus point through their own inability to control possession. The fact that the conversion from the touchline was made to look easy by Adrian Jarvis just rubbed salt in the wound.

 Final score 15 – 28 to NEC Harlequins.

Where do we go from here? To hell (or National Division 1) in a hand cart, trundled off like some rotting corpse in the Black Death?

Or can this talented and capable band of brothers look inwards and start producing controlled performances which will win matches. I hope so.

As has been proved, the return of a talismanic captain doesn’t produce better performances. The fact that players undoubtedly train very hard during the week doesn’t produce better performances when basic skills of possession and control of the game aren’t used to the full during the game.

On BBC Radio Northampton last night, James Burridge put some very searching questions to Paul Grayson, such as “why do we see props and locks standing out on the wings when they should be in the rucks and mauls doing the hard graft?” Long pause, followed by a statement that “players are not sticking to their job descriptions and not doing what they should in a game”

Excuse me Paul but shouldn’t the coaches also be looking inwards and in the mirror on Monday morning and asking themselves why the team aren’t sticking to the game plan and what are they, the coaches, going to do to change the way Saints play, because as sure as hell, it isn’t working at the moment.