A Different Corne? - Edinburgh Preview
By Mark H
August 26 2004
It’s here. Many players have changed clubs in the summer (Mike Catt and Matt Dawson spring to mind); many players have come through the ranks (John Clarke here and Mathew Tait at Newcastle); and other players have come from overseas (Robbie Kempson, Selborne Boome and Matt Burke amongst others).
None have had the press that one man has had. Welcome to Franklin’s Gardens, Corne Krige. Saturday’s friendly against Edinburgh brings Krige’s first appearance in a gold, black and green shirt. A different kind of green to that worn on his last appearance in this country. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that afternoon at Twickenham (and they have been done to death, so no more on that from me), there is one fact. Northampton have turned a different Corne and the man is now a Saint. Whether he is here for two minutes, two games, two months, two years, whilst he wears the shirt that is so precious to us all, he deserves our support. There will be enough flak (not to Chron sub-editors - that’s flak, not flank) from other clubs for him to get it from us. I’m sure that whatever abuse gets thrown at him, he’ll be able to cope with it; frankly, he has had to do so for the last two years at least. What we can do is that for every piece of abuse, we come back with stronger support. He comes straight into a shirt, and into the captain’s armband, the position that most of us expect him to take next weekend for that first league game against Bath. It will be interesting to see how he gels with his new team mates, having only been in the country since Sunday, but it’s the perfect start for him before it gets serious. Krige’s fellow South Africa, Selborne Boome, also makes a first appearance for his new side, having missed the comfortable victory over Newport Gwent Dragons last week with an eye injury. The full squad as named on Wednesday is:- 15 Bruce Reihana
14 John Rudd
13 Mark Tucker
12 Marc Stcherbina
11 Wylie Human
10 Paul Grayson
9 Mark Robinson
1 Tom Smith
2 Steve Thompson
3 Robbie Morris
4 Selborne Boome
5 Matt Lord
6 Darren Fox
7 Corne Krige (captain)
8 Andrew Blowers
16 Dan Richmond
17 Robbie Kempson
18 Damien Browne
19 Mark Soden
20 Johnny Howard
21 Shane Drahm/Andy Vilk
22 Ben Cohen
23 Chris Budgen
24 Grant Seely
25 Chris Hyndman
26 John Clarke
Edinburgh’s side is as yet unknown, but with the midweek difficulties in getting a side together, and having to get special dispensation from the SRU to field some players the national organisation would rather not see play, I doubt that it will be known before Saturday afternoon! For the second week running, it’s a team from pool five of this season’s Heineken Cup, and with Edinburgh having got to the quarter finals last season before being ushered out of the competition by Toulouse, they’ll be looking to repeat that this time around. With players like Chris Paterson, Brendan Laney and Simon Taylor to return over the coming months, they will fancy their prospects of getting past the aforementioned Dragons, Perpignan, and Newcastle if they have a full squad.
It should be a comfortable afternoon for the home heroes. Get the basics right, and I can see Saints winning by between 20 and 30 points.