Scarlets v Northampton Saint, Parc Y Scarlets, 14.01.12 ko 1.30pm

First topic message reminder :

Righty, no team announcements as of yet, will edit them in from 12noon onwards but thought it best to get a thread started!

What do people think about this one?

Scarlets coming into it off the back of a 3 match winning streak, even if they have been playing uninspiring rugby. The way we've been playing hasn't been great, but we've been getting the wins. Confidence should be pretty high.

Slight worries in the camp this week with injuries to Gareth Davies, Rhodri Williams, Liam Williams and Sean Lamont all being monitored, with the big Scottish winger being the main concern.

Northampton Saints come into this match after showing some brilliant form, including a very good win over Harlequins, with full back Ben Foden in particular, playing very well.

Saints as usual should have the better of it in the pack, but will they be able to break down the big, solid Scarlets backline? Having Foden back should be a huge boost to them, as Pisi struggled massively in the first match between these two sides.

Personally I am very wary of Saints at the moment. They are playing some very good rugby (as highlighted in their 2nd half performance against Castres). Scarlets are going to have to be in top, top form if they even want to compete. Anything resembling our performance against Glasgow last week, will result in a loss for us.

I'm hoping the Scarlets make the step up, if we do, I don't think we'll lose at home. Huge ask though. I'd have Saints down as favourites for this one.

Scarlets team against Northampton Saints, 14th January 2012, kick off 1.30pm at Parc y Scarlets: 15 Liam Williams, 14 George North, 13 Scott Williams, 12 Jon Davies, 11 Viliame Iongi, 10 Rhys Priestland, 9 Gareth Davies, 1 Iestyn Thomas, 2 Matthew Rees (capt), 3 Deacon Manu, 4 Lou Reed, 5 Dominic Day, 6 Aaron Shingler, 7 Rob McCusker, 8 Ben Morgan.

Replacements: 16 Ken Owens, 17 Phil John, 18 Rhodri Jones, 19 Josh Turnbull, 20 Johnathan Edwards, 21 Rhodri Williams, 22 Stephen Jones, 23 Gareth Maule.

Northampton Team: 15 Ben FODEN 14 Chris ASHTON 13 George PISI 12 Tom MAY 11 Vasily ARTEMYEV 10 Stephen MYLER 9 Martin ROBERTS 1 Soane TONGA’UIHA 2 Dylan HARTLEY (capt) 3 Brian MUJATI 4 Samu MANOA 5 Mark SORENSON 6 Calum CLARK 7 Phil DOWSON 8 Roger WILSON

Replacements 16 Mike HAYWOOD 17 Alex WALLER 18 Paul DORAN JONES 19 Christian DAY 20 Ben NUTLEY 21 Lee DICKSON 22 Ryan LAMB 23 Scott ARMSTRONG

Scarlets probably should have scored in the last ten minutes with all their pressure, but during that time Saints should probably have a put another away too.

Scoreline a fairish reflection. Definitely a game of two halves.

Coltnet wrote:

nathan wrote:dead cert for the 15 slot for england

Agree. Fantastic game for him. Really safe, no mistakes and a try!

From what I have seen its a straight shoot out between him and Brown, is there any others in the equation?

Both sides squandered opportunities, but coupled with some great defence made for a fun second half.

Col,

Munster home to Castres so can't see them getting nothing, more likely try BP win.

From a Welsh perspective I thought JD looked powerful and hungry to get the ball.

Coltnet wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:

Cymroglan wrote:On todays performance neither side deserve to progress any further

True enough. Saints have improved as the group has progressed (but left it too late) and Scarlets have gone backwards.

Is it still mathmatically possible if Munster get nothing at Castres and Saints get a TBP next week? Massive long shot though! Highly unlikey!

I won't be putting a big bet on, let's put it that way!

Munster have already played Scarlets twice.

SafeAsMilk wrote:

Coltnet wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:

Cymroglan wrote:On todays performance neither side deserve to progress any further

True enough. Saints have improved as the group has progressed (but left it too late) and Scarlets have gone backwards.

Is it still mathmatically possible if Munster get nothing at Castres and Saints get a TBP next week? Massive long shot though! Highly unlikey!

I won't be putting a big bet on, let's put it that way!

Me neither. I wonder what odds you'd get if Munster get nothing today though!

bedfordwelsh wrote:

Coltnet wrote:

nathan wrote:dead cert for the 15 slot for england

Agree. Fantastic game for him. Really safe, no mistakes and a try!

From what I have seen its a straight shoot out between him and Brown, is there any others in the equation?

Not really. I'm happy with those two tbh. I think Foden offers more in attack though so i'd start with him.

MrsP wrote:

Munster have already played Scarlets twice.

Yeah, but aren't we talking about Saints here?

12+5 = 17 for Saints would beat Munster's 16 if they got no more points today or against Saints in the final game.

Not likely!

First game I've seen Christian Day play in since returning form a number of months off injured. He was in the Saxons fold last year, but obviously wasn't able to make a case for the recent selection.

He did well from what I saw. The stats seem to agree. Only on the pitch for 17mins and he made 23m and 8 tackles. The only forwards from both sides who made more metres were Wilson & Dowson (both 24m and on for the full 80), and the the only Saints player who made more tackles was Wilson (9).

niwatts wrote:First game I've seen Christian Day play in since returning form a number of months off injured. He was in the Saxons fold last year, but obviously wasn't able to make a case for the recent selection.

He did well from what I saw. The stats seem to agree. Only on the pitch for 17mins and he made 23m and 8 tackles. The only forwards from both sides who made more metres were Wilson & Dowson (both 24m and on for the full 80), and the the only Saints player who made more tackles was Wilson (9).

Where do you find the stats?

http://www.espnscrum.com/heineken-cup-2011-12/rugby/match/144321.html

Click on the relevant green tabs.

Well I wasn;t sure if I wasnt going to this game, or go and see Bridgend Vs Pontypridd, I'm glad I went to Bridgend!
Stadium was rocking and pretty full, Bridgend won the game with the last kick of the match, this Northampton game didnt sound like much fun at all...
I even saw Duncan Jones (Ospreys prop) with his kids.

niwatts thanks for that.

Good win by the Saints. As for Scarlets, well their famed backline has been making errors all season in critical moments and today was no different. I imagine both of these teams will be looking at trying to get into the Amlin challenge cup. The competition is still very tight though.

Congratulations Saints. A complete turnaround from the fixture at Franklins Gardens.

Superb defence by Saints in the 2nd half. They really upped their game and were the better side, no arguments with that.

Can't understand how we didn't score in the last 10 mins, think Rhys P summed it up afterwards when he said we started to panic. No composure, and we played suicide rugby at times.

it's such a shame after we had such a solid first half.

I'm very disappointed but I can't argue with the result, we weren't good enough. Well done Saints

Probably the worst referring display i've seen in this years HC, stopped any chance of a decent free flowing and entertaining game. It wasn't just that AR was really petty, he was massively inconsistent and just plain wrong too many times.

As a Saints fan I didn't have a problem with May's yellow - if he had given the Scarlets lad a light slap in the face everyone would have wanted him off for at least 10 minutes, May just did the same thing with the ball so no complaints from me and I can expect Dorian West wasn't too pleased at half time. How Shingler stayed on the field in the second half I will never know.

Thought S.Jones was poor when he came on - too many mistakes from someone who is normally pretty assured. Morgan did well as did Manoa and Foden for Saints. Myler did the basics well although he wouldn't have been my MoM.

The pitch was in pretty poor condition - they stated on commentary that Swansea FC reserves play there. The Scarlets management might want to look into that if they want their team to continue playing fast open rugby on the occasions that Rolland isn't the ref.

rugbydreamer wrote:I'm very disappointed but I can't argue with the result, we weren't good enough. Well done Saints

Disagree with you on S Jones there B, apart from one knock on I thought he improved our backline, wish he'd been brought on sooner because the go forward and drive he gave us was brilliant. He finally brought Foxy into the game I thought.

Rhys P is very good in going forward but not when we are under the cosh, he shifted so much suicide ball onto our forwards it was ridiculous. Stevo stopped that happening and at least had us playing in the right areas of the pitch. It's one big aspect of Rhys P's game that he really needs to work on.

The pitch is in a spot of bother this season. We've got the Scarlets, Llanelli RFC and Swans reserves all playing on it, plus I think we had some weird fly infestation at the start of the season. Add to that the ridiculously wet winter we've had and it's struggling at the moment. We need some dry weather and a lot of sunshine, and it should come good. Agree we might need to look into having less games played on it next season.

THought Mylers was great for Saints. Kicked to the corners when needed, slotted all the points over, although he probs could have bought Saints' backs into it more. And as much as it pains me to say it, Foden played very well. Great try saving tackle on Sanjay in the last 10 mins. I was convinced he'd scored!

I also don't understand how Shingler stayed on the pitch either! thought he was a gonner for sure.

rugbydreamer - "Agree we might need to look into having less games played on it next season."

Here's a crazeeee idea - why don't the Llanelli Scarlets take a few games on the road to other parts of West Wales???

At least make a token gesture at 'regionalism'?

I don't like this idea of the regions playing their home game at other grounds.

Cymroglan wrote:I don't like this idea of the regions playing their home game at other grounds.

A detailed, well crafted argument Cymro. Maybe they should centre everything around the enormous population centre that is Llanelli. After all - they never fail to fill those stands at either end of PYS. Oh no, hang on.....

If I'm going to travel down to watch a region game then I expect to be sat in a nice modern stadium.
Now if I and many other North Walians can make the effort then I'm sure travelling the short distance to your nearest region should not cause you any undue hardship.
I'm fed up of hearing that the regions should do this that and the other when the problem is not with the regions but with stubborn fans who have no idea how lucky they are,

It's a shame there aren't more like you Cymro.

If there were then we might just fill a ground now and again.

I was thinking more along the lines of the Swans reserves not playing there, Casartelli, but then I guess we must get a lot of money from them to let them play there so wouldn't want to give up on that.

Also please name me another stadium in West Wales that is fully functional to host regional rugby? Before PyS it was Stradey, there's never been anything else good enough further West, so not sure exactly where else we'd play our games.

rugbydreamer wrote:I was thinking more along the lines of the Swans reserves not playing there, Casartelli, but then I guess we must get a lot of money from them to let them play there so wouldn't want to give up on that.

Also please name me another stadium in West Wales that is fully functional to host regional rugby? Before PyS it was Stradey, there's never been anything else good enough further West, so not sure exactly where else we'd play our games.

Off the top of my head; Carmarthen, Llandovery, Whitland, Narberth, Haverfordwest, Pembroke, Lampeter and Aberystwyth?

Granted, you'd need some temporary seating but a quick Google search indicates that would be a one-off cost of £50k. (Plus six grand four or five times a season to set it up). I'm sure that Carmarthenshire County Council would fund it - it's a drop in the ocean compared to the millions already advanced to the Scarlets.

This would easily cope with the attendances that would turn up for Llanelli vs. Connacht/Glasgow/Edinburgh/Newport etc and a few LV games.

But it would mean accepting regionalism. And I'm not sure that Llanelli Scarlets are ready for that any time soon.

MrF: Well said, that is the normal argument they all use they don't have the facilities, the pubs are rubbish (Dragons supporters), no place to park, road links etc, any reason not to move from their old club ground 9except the Ospreys.

I said name me a stadium, not name towns in West Wales, Casartelli. There aren't any stadiums good enough out there.

And the Scarlets were a region, before regionalism was even thought of, I don't know why people are finding that so hard to grasp.

Anyways, this has been argued to death on other threads. This is about the match yesterday so lets all (me included!) try and stick to that